I'd been planning a series of Arms Room posts, but accidentally zilched an entire CompactFlash card full of photos in the parking lot at Knob Creek because I r dum.
Anyhow, I got a big post all wrote up for tomorrow, just waiting on enough available light by which to shoot a photo. Meanwhile, here's a teaser for the upcoming stuff on pocket Europellet launchers.
I still don't understand why they put delete buttons on digital cameras, or why they stick a card format menu option in with other functions that are more commonly needed. (Set the flash mode or destroy a whole day's worth of work....hmm, what to choose, what to choose.)
ReplyDeleteThat's like having an eject button on a camera that shoots the film out unraveling like a roll of toilet paper on Halloween. Are the exposure systems that untrustworthy?
The Delete button is there so that you can delete a picture that was obviously mucked up and not worth keeping. Under some circumstances, that's a very useful ability to have.
ReplyDeleteWhat you have to avoid is accidental _formatting_. Most cameras try to help with that by putting an extra "please confirm" question before they run the format. If you're paying attention, it's not a problem. If you're not paying attention ...
Personally, as somebody who shoots A LOT of digital pictures, I find that both the delete and format options have their uses.
TJP,
ReplyDeleteNo, it takes work, and a "Y/N?" confirmation to zorch the whole card, but that is indeed what I did, thinking that I had already moved all the pictures to my hard drive back home.
The photos are likely still there.
ReplyDeleteDo you know anyone who can dd the whole flash and then recover the photos using something like Formost?
The "wear leveling" algorithm ensures that even if you've taken pictures afterwards, the flash itself tries very hard not to overwrite earlier flash space.
Someone else chime in if there's a GUI based, non-free non-linux program that they know of. I'm sure they exist.
It wasn't that big a deal, really; I can just take them again.
ReplyDeleteI always like clicking over to the arms room...there's this whole calming, historical archive feel to that place:o)
ReplyDeleteI noticed this before when you discussed those early .32's: while the design elements of the pistols themselves are, let us say "eclectic", grip design is remarkably similar. Any idea if there was common sourcing for those?
AT
Tam: If you still have the card, try some freeware file recovery tools.
ReplyDeleteThey "erase" files in compact flash cards the same way they "erase" them on you hard drive, by replacing the first letter in the filename with a "?", which tells the OS it's OK to write over the space.
If you haven't used the flash card much, most of the photos will be recoverable.
The better tools will recover an accidental re-format as well.
ReplyDeleteIf you buy the higher end Extreme III or IV SD cards from Sandisk they come with recovery tools for Windows. It's worth buying at least one to get the software.
ReplyDeleteCheck the description to be sure, though: there are "promotional" packages and such with just the card and no extras.
Tam -
ReplyDeleteI can probably recover your photos. If you want me to try, respond here and I'll get in touch with you for the details. I've got some pretty good recovery software and it's worked for me in the past in similar situations.
K
Thank you very much for the offer. It's just a few snaps of some pistols, though; I can just retake them. :)
ReplyDeleteTo clarify:
ReplyDeleteWhen Shootin' Buddy and I arrived at Knob Creek, I checked my camera to make sure the settings were on "reasonable" so I could pack a decent amount of shots on there (I'm still using the 16MB card that Oleg threw in with the camera back in '03...) I noticed that there were 8 or 10 snaps on there, closeups of some pistols, for some posts I was going to write and thought "Surely I copied those to the hard drive..." and formatted the card.
Only, you know, I had, but only one of them, for whatever reason. Durh!
What camera do you use, Tam? How big is the sensor, in pixels? Even a 1GB card, which are now dirt cheap at drugstores, will give you lots lots lots more shots than a 16MB card.
ReplyDeleteOkay Tam. I didn't understand the extenuating circumstances.
ReplyDelete@ wolfwalker
I understand the reasoning, but in practice I found that simply correcting the human error and pressing the shutter release a second time is much faster, and also less distracting. I've had one appropriately-sized card and one back-up since I started the doing the digital thing in the late 90s, and always had around 200 exposures each at full res.
If one is apt to make an exposure error, bracketing is much more useful than deleting (and more likely to capture the moment), but the drive mode function is usually buried somewhere, whereas the superfluous delete button always gets prominent placement. That's what I don't get--it's like they're purposely designing the interface to encourage bad practice.
Does any of this make sense?
Also:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=68&name=Flash-Memory