D300 corrupt JPG

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[gstark]

Adam,

I've seen similar issues in mine, and on more than one occasion. I think I've even posted something about it several months ago.

I've seen it manifest itself in a number of different ways too, and I'm trying to collect some examples of the issue.

It only happens on the jpg, and I only ever see it on the computer; never in camera.

It happens way too infrequently to be able to isolate the cause. Up till your post, Leigh was convinced that it was the cards I was using, but As I only see it post transfer to the computer, I didn't hold that PoV.

That you are seeing this as well suggests an issue somewhere within the camera, but as I'm only seeing this in the jpgs, for me it's really little more than a minor annoyance. I can always just manually process the raw back to something usable.

[ATJ]

I'm up to DSC_2315 with my D300. I have only been shooting raw+fine since DSC_1689 so that's 627 images. I have not seen this once yet.

[DVEous]

... Obsolete ...

[gstark]

It only happens on the jpg, and I only ever see it on the computer; never in camera.

It happens way too infrequently to be able to isolate the cause. Up till your post, Leigh was convinced that it was the cards I was using, but As I only see it post transfer to the computer, I didn't hold that PoV.

Gary, that's interesting.
This particular image of mine is also corrupt (as per above) when viewing it in-camera.

When scrolling through images viewed on the D300 TFT, I am getting a "File does not contain image data." dialog umpteen images before this one.

What happens when you turn the camera off and then on again?

Part of the problem is, of course, that this is a very intermittent problem. Trying to find a way to make it repeatable is the challenge.

It looks like there was a card error (related or coincidence?), but I don't understand why the image posted above would have a mixture of processing applied to it.

Is it a mixture of processing? When I've seen errors, they have manifested themselves in a number of ways.

When I've seen this sort of thing, it's been as though a part of the image has been transposed into a different area of the image: the top has been moved to the bottom, for instance.

And I've seen other strange manifestations ... that I cannot describe.

I'll see if I can find some of my faulty images and post them. May make this a sticky in case others see issues as well.

[onoitzalvin]

hey guys.
greets.

i have been having the same problem.

d300 / intron 8gb CF / factory battery

in the very first usage, after shooting about 200 photos in with the d300, i decided to view the photos via playback/preview mode in-camera. about every 15 to 25 photos i scroll though, i would catch a photo that gets overlapped by a previous one. meaning if i was previwing image dsc_1567, half of dsc_1568 or dsc_1566 would get plopped on top of dsc_1567.

it was a major pain because some of the photos i wanted to keep would get destroyed.

i was hoping it was only in the previews, but it's not. the overlapping appears after i import via lightroom on the full-size photo when on the computer. the part that is overlapped is covered with random variations of RGB pixel banding. this is when i'm shooting JPEG.

d300 / intro 8gb CF / NOT factory battery

i was in a rush and didn't have time to charge so i used the scrappy non-factory battery that this shanky lame-face of a dealer sold to my father (i requested for the factory, but he knew we were under a rushed purchase and took advantage of my pops who he knew wasn't a big fan of technology or detail-oriented things). anyway, after shooting about 300 pics in with this setup, all of a sudden i get a flashing CHA on the screen on top of the camera. i tried previewing my photos after that, but then most of them went corrupt. i lost almost all my shots that i shot that day for a graffiti magazine. and i didn't have enough time to backup b/c i had to take car of my brother and sister visiting (tokyo).

i let the playback mode sit as long as possible, and then all of a sudden some of the files with a red "X" marked over them would reappear, mostly the photos previous to using the new battery.

only two of the photos using the crap-battery reappeared during the preview , the rest were flunked.

but i would have to keep recycling this process because sometimes it would revert back to fully corrupt, basically imagine zooming all the way out in the preview area with a 9x9 grid to view your thumbnails, and seeing a sea of red X's everywhere.

i ran home to plug the cam into lightroom to import as much as possible before all my photos were really gone.
about 1100 of them were really gone. the files torwards the end of the card and more towards the recent folders seemed hopeless.

i imported in blocks, about every two folders (i.e mon + tue's shots) and after importing all the folders that had possibly non-corrupt files, i made my way to import the corrupt ones as well, and bam, the DCIM folder locks up. it appears as a single (locked) FILE on os x and not a folder.

i placed the card back into the camera, as i was still in a rush to bring my brother and sister around.
the card seemed to reset itself. it seemed as if all the photos were deleted. corrupt and non corrupt.
but the remaining DCIM FILE was 3.25gb.

i tried to use data rescue to recover the files, but they all now appear corrupt.

does anyone share a solution to this similar experience?

what do you folks use to recover corrupt files?

this is a nightmare.

thanks,
alvin

[gstark]

Hi Alvin.

First of all, welcome to the forum. Please put a meaningful location into your profile, and please review the portal page for details of what we mean when we say "meaningful profile".

Getting to your problem, this is unlikely to be related to the battery. Have you tried this using different CF cards? That would be the first thing I would try.

And shoot in raw + jpg too. We don't yet know whether the problem you're seeing is actually file corruption, or perhaps just a file-read problem. What do the files look like on a PC? With Raw, and when viewing on a PC, you have a few more options.

[onoitzalvin]

thanks gary.

i'm going to grab a sandisk 8gb CF extreme IV tomorrow and run tests.
right now i'm running this intron card through photo rescue and seeing if i can recover the lost photos.

[latch]

It looks like there was a card error (related or coincidence?), but I don't understand why the image posted above would have a mixture of processing applied to it.

Is it a mixture of processing? When I've seen errors, they have manifested themselves in a number of ways.

When I've seen this sort of thing, it's been as though a part of the image has been transposed into a different area of the image: the top has been moved to the bottom, for instance.

And I've seen other strange manifestations ... that I cannot describe.

Not long ago I accidentally deleted some jpgs off an external hard disk that I use for backup. I attempted various tools for recovering the files, and got some back. However, quite a few files were only partly recovered and so were "corrupted" jpgs; here's an example:



Interestingly it has a very similar "transposition" of a section of the image, but also has a colour distortion. In some of my partly recovered files it was more extreme, like this:



This would suggest that the variation in colour is merely from the jpg corruption and not in fact from a mixture of processing.

[jethro]

I Believe that this issue is caused by the card or memory buffer onboard not keeping up with the transfer rate. This happen sporadically in Photoshop as well.

Its simply just a random problem that happens with digital file transfer. Live with it!

Jethro

[onoitzalvin]

hey latch,

which recovery software was the most successful for you?
any chance it was per os x?
i lost a bunch of files using an intron CF card.
it got worse and worse within a week.

thanks,
alvin

regarding my old post about the banding, it ended being a corrupt memory card.
goes to show, don't buy from some shady photo joint in upper manhattan.
and it was an intron branded CF card, so stay away if you can.

[latch]

I was recovering files from a GNU/Linux ext3 filesystem, and it turns out that this particular file system is not very easy to un-delete from. I happened to find a tool called ext3grep to be best in my situation, but nothing I tried was perfect.

I wrote a short article about my experience, if you want to read more of the details, and it can be found at http://lachlan.rogers.name/2008/08/un-deleting-files-on-my-ext3-backup-partition/

I don't have any experience trying to recover files off a memory card, but as far as I understand they use a FAT filesystem. I have successfully un-deleted files from FAT filesystems before, but that is quite a different thing from recovering files off a corrupt device.

[RDW]

Another victim of the corrupt jpg syndrome here, but fortunately only on the jpgs and I usually shoot neff + fine.
I have only seen this problem with neff + fine, never with jpg only. On at least one occasion I can put it down to turning the camera off before the buffer had finished writing to card, but not sure that would account for each of 10-20 times I've seen it happen. On another occasion I think it occurred when the buffer was taking time catching up and I resumed shooting and loading up the buffer afresh. My wife keeps telling me I'm useless at multitasking so I figure I have a male camera--gets confused reading & deleteing from buffer to card and writing to buffer from sensor all at the same time. I know I would!?!
I have 2 D300's and seen it on both. I use Samsung cards, 2x 8GB and 1 x 16Gb, and only seen the problem on the slowest one.
I had figured it was simply a read/write error--buffer/transfer card compatibility issue. It still amazes me that so much data is even captured, processed, recorded at all, let alone without some sort of glitch or error sometime. So long as I am not losing any data I'm happy to cut the combination of equipment a bit of slack and just make sure I keep using neff + fine and don't turn the camera off.
FWIW (For what it's worth)