Photoclubalpha

Today my A700 suddenly stopped during a shoot and gave me a memory card error message

(Swedish camera so I don't know the english message exactly)

During almost six years and over 80k pictures taken with my D7D I've never seen this before.

I restarted the camera and was able to review and take a couple more images but decided to change card after the incident.
The card is a Kingston 16GB at most a couple of months old.
Should I be worried?
Anyone else had this problem?

Unfortunately not my first technical incident this weekend either, installing more memory in my PC this friday resulted in two BSODs first and then some corrupted system files making the system impossible to start..

Br,
Zeb!

Probably from the memory card. I wouldn't worry for now.

I hope it was just a temporarily glitch with the memory card anyway, even though I don't shoot professionally I don't like the idea of losing any pictures

/Z!

[SiC] wrote:I hope it was just a temporarily glitch with the memory card anyway, even though I don't shoot professionally I don't like the idea of losing any pictures

Then just flush the pix off the card after a shooting session and then do reformat the card in the camera each and every time upon that.

(And btw, the a700 is very tolerant towards the mem cards. Good for you to have never used 4bit-cell cards in some a300/350.)

agorabasta wrote:Then just flush the pix off the card after a shooting session and then do reformat the card in the camera each and every time upon that.

Yes, this is how I normally work..

/Z!

Yesterday it happened again

The camera wasn't even writing to the card, buffer was flushed and I then walked about ten meters, put the cam to my eye and half-pressed to focus when the camera gave me the message about memory card error.

After restarting everything seems fine and dandy but this really bugs me anyway!

/Z!

[SiC] wrote: The card is a Kingston 16GB at most a couple of months old.
Should I be worried?
Anyone else had this problem?

I seem to remember hearing of issues with Kingston cards in the past. That was some time ago though.

At the very least you should be able to swap it under warranty for another card?

Sad to say, Kingston cards have had problems ever since the KM digital cameras. They made one of the first faster (100X-ish) cards in the early days and it just didn't work reliably.

David

Some KM/Sony cams had problems with the 2-bit cell flash. E.g. the Transcend 133x 32GB and some 16GB were always a problem. Kingston also used that kind of flash in their CF cards, so all may be.
The rule for me was to use the 133x cards of 8GB only for max compatibility. The 32/16GB cards normally worked in the a700, but were often recognised at half capacity in the a300, and they also could not be reformatted in the a300. The 266x and 300x cards were no problem at all.
I actually never used anything faster than the 300x in my a700. But I can imagine possible interface timing incompatibilities with the cards much newer than the camera design.

In fact, using a card faster than the pretty old 266x hardly makes any sense with the a700, as the cam is in most cases limited by its buffer/processor performance rather than by the card speed already at the 133x speed.

It is a Kingston 16GB Ultimate 266X.

So, should I sell it and get another make?

I used the 4GB 266X Kingston with the Alpha 900 in November 2008, without problems. I also had a SanDisk Ducati Edition and I see that I still have the SanDisk, but at some point I have given away the Kingston or sold it with a camera. There must be a good reason I kept the SanDisk and got rid of the Kingston, I suspect that it may have performed badly on a later camera or shown up in speed tests as underperforming.

David

I have never suffered any problems with Kingston cards but my A900 froze on me using a Transcend card last year. It cost me some valuable lost shots before I suspected it was the card and changed it. I believe that it was a fake card sold unsuspecting by an Amazon supplier. I have heard of fake Sandisk cards also purchased through a reliable supplier causing problems on Alpha cameras. These fraudulent copies are a real problem as they look absolutely the real thing!