[Leica] Re: Dangers of Digital (OT)

[Cummer <cummer@netvigator.com>]

Hello Luggers,
I was in Ubud Bali a month ago to celebrate my 59th with some friends 
of similar vintage. I took along my Hexar RF with Leica glass and 
also a Canon G1 with three compact flash cards - a 64mb and two 
128mbs. The G1 focus / shutter lag ruled it out for street photos 
(and just about everything else except static shots) but it was fun 
to take pictures of stationary people and then show them the result 
and then take a real picture with the Hexar fitted (mostly) with the 
Tri Elmar.
When I got back to Hong Kong I tried to download the Bali images from 
the full 64mb card (about thirty pictures at maximum JPEG resolution) 
and I got an image corrupted message when I tried to read the card to 
my Mac G4 through the Imation compact flash reader. This happened, 
despite the fact that I had reviewed (and deleted) and reshot the 
images without trouble on the G1. I then managed to down load one of 
the 128Mb cards (with about 70 images) and assumed that the 64mb 
Sandisk card was just kaput. This weekend, however, I tried to 
download some new images from the 128mb card that I had previously 
emptied and got the same image corrupt message - despite the fact 
that I had just reviewed the 30 or so images while the card was in 
the camera. I reformatted the card and reinstalled the Imation Reader 
program and it would read new test pictures but, of course, the 
previous images are gone forever. Also, out of curiosity I 
reformatted the 64mb card and now it also will record fresh images 
and download through the reader. I have no idea what happened, but my 
faith in being able to bring home digital images and save them is 
certainly shaken. I have never had such trouble with good old 
fashioned film, despite the rare x-ray problem and the few times 
developing gets messed up. At least then I have some idea what went 
wrong!
Howard Cummer
Hong Kong
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