Canon Rebel and 16GB CF cards

Ok, so I have done new photos, but I first have to explain the drama that unfolded over the past weekend.

We bought a new 16GB Promaster CF card for the Canon Rebel. We have been using 4 and 8 GB cards up to this point. We figured, hey it's the same price and I don't need an extremely fast card so let's try it out. It appeared to be working, we saw the pictures on the camera and all was happy ... until we tried to download the pictures to the computer via our card reader. The card shows up at a 32MB card that isn't formatted. So we pop it back in to the camera to try and see the pictures again. The camera now doesn't recognize the card. All the pictures are gone! Bummer...

So we drop off the card where we bought it. They swap it out for a new one and we go again. This time I'm the second shooter for a wedding. I still don't know why I didn't test the card out before leaving the store. I think we swapped it out en route to the session so there wasn't a whole lot of time. I go through the entire wedding session getting my fun shots. Later that night we get a similar problem with this card as the previous one. The card reader detects this card as a 4GB card and wants to format it. Uh oh...

Um so we call the store where we bought it on Monday, they couldn't retrieve anything from the previous card we swapped out. That's not a good sign. I start doing my own research. I'm looking at the data on the card with Disk Probe. I can see that the sector 0 has been wiped clean. The partition data is missing, but sector 1 - 4096 are all there and I can see structure to what's there. 4097 - whatever I look at all look structured as well. So I'm not sure why I'm not able to recover any data off this card.

So last ditch effort is to format the card from within the camera and see if anything shows up in my recovery software. I popped the card back in the camera and lo and behold the pictures showed up! So instead of popping the card back in the card reader, I connected my camera to the computer and downloaded the images that way. I was able to get all the jpgs. The raw files were missing, but hey I'm not going to complain.

Next step is to see if I can get the images from the original card back the same way. We went back to the store and no dice. The card shows as empty when I put it in the camera. Bummer, but at least we got the critical wedding pics off the second card.

We swapped the 16GB card for 2 8 GB cards and tested them out in the store. All works well. I guess I learned my lesson the hard way. Always test your cards and compatibility with computer before going to an import shoot. Good to know!

I'll post some of the fun pictures I got from the wedding soon.