A lesson learnt taking photos overseas!!

[mic291]

Hi All

Well I feel like a stalker here, sending emails without actually posting a proper photo, however I do have an excuse in that I have spent so much time on a plane in the last 6 weeks, I am close to renewing my Platinum Qantas membership inside 3 months!! I will get there.

Last week I was in India, this week around Oz and next week its holidays in Cuba and Mexico!

Taking photos in India is amazing, there is no shortage of awesome photo opportunities from landscapes, night shots, everyone loves portrature to street photography. I was trying a lot of street photography as I am in a lot of places over the coming months that I think will show more about the places and culture than taking landscapes! Well "trying" is the key word....

Anyway, funny story which at the time was not so funny. I was taking fotos of what I thought was an old Indian palace, which on the old map I picked up from a street vendor seemed to indicate it was that very thing. After asking what I could and should not take photos of, as it turns out I was in a muslim area that had a number of riots and terrorist problems some years ago and found myself explaining to the local police what I THOUGHT I was actually doing was taking photos of palace and I was not there to cause trouble!!

I guess they didnt believe me as they deleted my memory card and several hours worth of photos !!! As frustrating as that was, they were pretty good about it and talked us through what we could shoot and what areas we should avoid to not get into trouble. They were very polite and it could have been a lot worse I guess based on some of the stories you read...

All in all I found the people loved their fotos being taken and it was a learning experience for a beginner taking shots over there thats for sure. The new Tamron 18-50mm lens was excellent and later this week I hope to share some fotos to get feedback as I could not post them earlier for some reason.

Cheers
Mike

[gstark]

Mike,

And if you've not since used that memory card, those deleted images would probably be able to be recovered.

[Bindii]

Well it sounds like even though you haven't posted a shot yet you will soon have enough interesting to images to post to keep us amused... Looking forward to seeing the photos you do have.. (and bummer about what happened lol)..

[mic291]

Yup, dont worry Gary, will sort that out !! Went to memory stick straight away.

I work in the IT industry so as soon as he said delete the fotos I was straight onto it !!! No point in arguing when I dont lose the fotos.

M

[andy]

Thanks goodness you are in the know Most people wouldn't realise.

A bit of a side thought - but what if instead of deleting the photos you formatted the card? I would imagine that most cameras just perform the equivalent of a 'quick format' - removing the directory structure but not actually removing all the data. Or do they do a 'full' format - any ideas??

I look forward to seeing some of the Indian/Cuban/Mexican/Ozzy photos.

[gstark]

Mick,

Good work.

Andy,

Correct. Formatting just rewrites the ToC on the card. It's usually pretty easy to recover the lost data.

[aim54x]

yep, i pulled of stuff from my sandisk ducati 4gb cards that have been there since over a dozen formats ago, that section of the card jsut not overwritten yet.

for the record i formatted my card, in camera, that contained some photos that i had not downloaded yet so i just plugged it into my computer and used the software that comes with all sandisk extreme III/IV/Ducati cards.

[surenj]

Interesting story and a great tip! Looking forward to seeing your 'lost' photos