February 4, 2016

Another Hard Lesson Learned in Death Valley

Beneath the Clouds – Dante’s View, Death Valley

 

The wonderful thing about hard lessons is that they create such strong and lasting convictions. 

A couple of years ago on my annual Death Valley trip I was using my new Canon 5D Mk III and had hastily set it up before leaving on the journey. When I got home I realized that I had been recording in B&W JPEG mode and not in Color RAW mode. That was a very hard lesson because I lost many of the images and the remaining ones were not “what they should have been.”

And now Death Valley has once again been the location for another hard lesson. 

My Mk III has two card slots and I have always set the camera to write to both cards simultaneously, using the second card as a backup. But after years of never having a card failure, I switched the camera to record to only one card.

Ironically I made that change on this trip and as fate would have it, the card died mid-trip.

I could not read the card with the camera and I could not read it with the computer. Windows could not even see the card (never a good sign) and I tried using three different recovery programs on it…without success.

So I started calling around to disk recovery services and after hearing prices as high as $2000 to recover the images, I finally went with a company that charged $650 and only if they successfully recovered the data. That’s a lot of money for some images, but after all the time and money I had spent on this three week journey, it is worth it to me.

The company was able to recover some of the images and the card is on the way back to me. Soon I’ll know how many of my images were saved. The image above and about 25 other dune images were captured on my second card, the one that should have been a backup of my data.

I’m always lecturing my kids that decisions shouldn’t be based on probabilities, but rather on consequences. The probability of a card failing is very low, in fact I’ve never had it happen once since I started using digital in 2004. But the consequences are high “if” it fails (some say “when” it fails).

The probability of my card failing was low, but the consequences were high.

The lesson learned? Write to both cards even if there is only a one in a million chance that the card will fail.

Cole

 

 

 

24 thoughts on “Another Hard Lesson Learned in Death Valley

  1. Cole, that’s great advice. Hope you’re able to recover the majority of your images. If you make it over to Maui, I’ll share a Death Valley story with you that taught me a very good lesson too.

  2. I’ve used the second slot as a backup since they had 2 card slots, using 2 64gb cards. I basically learned your lesson during my professional jazz musician days, “never use new gear on the gig.” In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Sorry for your card issue, Cole, but am convinced it will never happen again,

  3. Cole,

    A). Really sorry. Sick feeling in stomach.
    B). Good luck with recovery effort.
    C). Thanks for the valuable heads-up.

    Take care,

    Rick.

  4. Oh Cole, I’m so sorry this happened to you but salute the way you handled it. And your probability/consequences concept is spot on. I’ll certainly bear it mind from now on.
    Hope you retrieve some of your favourite shots.

  5. Three weeks……I feel your pain. I’ve never had a card failure either and always just left the second slot in my camera empty. Not anymore, at least not on trips that ‘count’. But talk about probability……what are the odds you would have camera problems in the same place twice?

  6. So very sorry to hear, Cole. Knowing the planning, diligence and effort that you put in to your images, I can’t imagine the feeling.
    I have always used the second slot as overflow. No longer….thank you for sharing your story.

  7. spectacular photo!! so beautiful. well done

    p.s. and sorry about the card. I had that happen to me once on an assignment but if you send it in to the manufacturer sometimes they can recover data

  8. I just upgraded to a camera with two card slots. Thought it was un-necessary redundancy, but now, immediately put in a second card and set it for backup.
    Thanks for the suggestion. I’ve never had a card failure, but …

  9. Sorry and thank you very much for taking the time to share the story. Something I never considered and I immediately went to check to see if my camera even has two slots – it does (one CF and one Memory Stick) but you cannot write to both (Sony A900). Normally I download a day’s images to a laptop every evening so the most that would be lost would be one day’s shooting. However, for the first time ever on a long trip recently I only took a portable hard drive to back up images and I don’t know if that would have caught the card failure – heart palpitations thinking about losing a month’s images. Very sorry that your misfortune has helped me learn of a weak link in my system.

  10. I am a new user of the 5D and will now set it for one slot to be backup. Your story struck me because some of the places I go in this world are places I may never get to again. To lose the images would be a heartbreaker. There are many who out of embarrassment (or maybe ego) would not have told the story, so thank you for sharing.

  11. Cole – I suggest a slight adjustment to your philosophy “…. decisions shouldn’t be based on probabilities, but rather on consequences”. You got to the right place, but I wanted to show why. I worked many years applying risk management for Environment Safety and Health and Security. I will try and keep it simple. Decisions should be made based on Risk. Risk includes both probability and consequence, however, you are correct in the difficulty of applying probability unless there is a huge sample size. So when you cannot accept a consequence from ever occurring, you take action to eliminate the potential of it happening and eliminate the potential for probability, thus you are left with risk = consequence, and you base your action to prevent (as best you can) the risk. In your case you have done that, however, there is still an infinitely small risk that both cards could go bad, perhaps to environmental exposure or design flaw. So better to use different make cards in each slot.
    I am now retired but this was an interesting discussion. Tx

  12. How easy. We do become very complacent at times and take things for granted. My motto remember to reset all before retiring after shoot. Cheers judith

  13. I’ve always used the second slot in my Nikon D600 for backup, but I’ve always wondered if I was being unnecessarily cautious. Thanks for clearing that up! I offer you condolences on losing your images, Cole. I’m sure it feels awful.

  14. OH MY!
    Whenever someone asks me, after shooting, if I got any nice photos, I always say, “We’ll see.” That’s because I got “trained” in the days of film where there were a ton of things that could (and did) go wrong. I think we’ve all gotten a bit complacent with digital processes, but your story is a needed wake-up call!
    Recently, I filmed some videos for a project. When I got home, I found that the plug for the mic wasn’t plugged in all the way and the sound came out weak and fuzzy. Had to go back and re-film. No way to recover what wasn’t there. But, there was a lesson learned about that aspect of the camera that I never considered before.

  15. That is a hard lesson for sure!
    I’m sorry I missed your program in Loveland Monday night, my plane got in late…
    I did get some great photos at the missions near Tubac Az though.

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