I got a digital camera for my birthday a few months ago, a Fuji Finepix (I can’t recall what the model number is). It comes with a very tiny 16mb memory card to store the photos on. I made several transfers of photos to my computer via USB, with no problems. I’m using an iMac, and when I’ve finished transferring my photos, I drag the camera icon to the trashcan, and the screen on my camera says, “remove ok”. I can then unplug it from my computer and all is well, and I erase the photos on my camera through its menu.
Well, I erased all the current photos on it awhile ago. Yesterday I went to take a picture and it wouldn’t let me, saying “card full”. So I went into the menu, but it said “no images”. So I thought, this is weird, and I hooked it up to my computer to see if there was something hidden in there…nope. There are no photos on the memory card, and yet it continues to say “card full” and will not let me take pictures.
Does it sound like there might be something wrong with my card or camera? Is there any way I can remedy it myself, or will I need to buy a new memory card or (gasp) camera?
Do you have a second memory card to try? If that works (and I suspect it would), I would think the 16 MB card is no longer formatted, or improperly formatted.
Maybe your camera has a menu item to “erase all pictures”, if so, try it, it may put your card back to rights.
The easiest way to test this is to borrow or buy another memory card, and try it in the camera. It sounds like it’s the card to me, but you never know.
Also, USB memory card readers aren’t very expensive, and I find it easier to work with the card reader rather than connecting my camera directly to the computer (I also have a Mac). When the card is inserted into the reader, it shows up as a removable drive, and you can delete picture files by trashing them in the normal way.
I’d say it needs to be formatted. The camera will have this option someplace.
As an aside, neither my Olympus camera nor my MP3 player will even format my two 128M Smartmedia cards after use in my USB card reader on WinXP. WinXP will read/write/format them just fine, but the camera and player both just say ‘Card Error’ when I try it there. So even that’s not guarenteed. :dubious:
Thanks for the suggests so far. I tried the “erase all frames” option - no luck there. I think I’ll see if I’m able to format the memory card before I spring for a new one - I don’t know how much they are, but I don’t imagine they’re cheap.
Yup, this’ll fix it up. Reformat the card in the camera and all will be fine. It sometimes happens if you unplug the camera from the computer too early, or use the camera in another device, that it gets “confused”. A reformat will fix it up.
Yep, according to dealram.com, you should be able to get a 128MB for around $30.00 US, with shipping. It’s actually almost cheaper than buying a 64MB card.
One unlikely thing that you might check is to see if the card is locked. Some cards have a tiny switch that allows you to write protect it. (I doubt this is your problem, as the camera should be able to correctly identify that the card is locked.)
For future reference, instead of using the ‘erase all images’ option after dumping your pictures to the computer, format the card each time.
Also be aware that a 16MB card doesn’t give you 16MB of data, fomatting eats up a few. My 512MB (CF) card only has 488MB of space after formatting in my Canon 300D.
Final bit of advice-- only format the card in the camera, not through a card reader on your computer. But do use a card reader to download. It saves the battery life on your camera, if nothing else.
I’d actually avoid using the “erase all images” option period. At least in Apple’s iPhoto, there’s a nasty bug where it will erase all the images even if the move to the computer wasn’t successful due to lack of memory space. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to make sure that the move to the computer was successful before reformatting the card.
Of course, you * are * regularly backing up your computer and putting the backups in a safe place, right?
Yeah, as others have said, get a card reader (they’re super cheap nowdays) and don’t erase the card until you confirm that all the pics are on your computer.
When i attached my card reader to a USB port, my computer recognizes it as another hard drive. I send the pictures from the card to the computer using the “Copy to…” rather than the “Send to…” function. That way, the images are copied to my computer, but also remain on the card.
After i’ve checked that all the pics made it OK, i put the card back in the camera and format from there. It’s always better to be safe than sorry.
And to the OP:
It really is worth your while to get a larger card if you want to do any printing, because you want to be able to take pictures at the highest possible resolution for printing. Pictures taken at lower resolutions look fine on your computer because computer screens can only display the equivalent of 72 dpi anyway. But if you try to print a photo using that sort of resolution it will look pretty poor.
