CF card panick attack

[bloodhound31]

Good thing this happened so I can share it with others...

Today I set up my Canon 400D with an 8GB CF card and an intervalometer above the assembly line of my factory floor for an interesting time lapse.

It took one photo every 15 seconds from 8am to 4pm. To my maths that's 1,920 photographs.

The display on the back of the camera was indicating that I still had a couple of hundred spaces available when I stopped it.

At home tonight, I have been trying to get the thing to load into my PC. The CF orange light on the back of the camera was flickering for over an hour.:eyepop: I tried restarting both the PC and camera but nothing. I tried another USB cable and still nothing.

This was unusual. I normally do exactly the same for my night star time lapses, even when I have 600 or so thirty second exposures. They always load up in a matter of a couple of minutes with no problem before today. Todays images are only 1/5th sec exposures.

False alarm.:doh:

I was just about to melt as I have been up all night waiting for the sky to clear, when it just took off and started downloading. I have never recorded this many images in one go before, and wasn't expecting it to take so long to do something.:rolleyes:

Perhaps this post alone may stop the next unsuspecting victim from panicking.... :D:thumbsup:

Baz.

[turbo_pascale]

Barry,

You should invest in a USB memory card reader for about $20 (internal or external).
I have found them to generally be faster than the download from the camera, and you have the added advantage of not having to leave the camera on.

Turbo

[erick]

For an SD card, you cannot go past this one at Jaycar for $8.95! Works well for me.

http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=XC4756&keywords=sd+card+reader&form=KEYWORD

[bloodhound31]

Thanks guys, I'll get one!

Baz.

[turbo_pascale]

There are a fair selection here (http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=105).

This one (http://www.dealsdirect.com.au/p/photofast-highspeed-card-reader/) gets a pretty good review around the traps.

Turbo

[White Rabbit]

Barry, there is a setting that you must have selected that will make the camera download automatically as soon as you plug it in.
This can be disabled on the pc. I think it might be when you plug a usb devise in and the menu comes up asking what you want to do when the device is plugged in. On one of my pc's i selected download photos automatically and this is what happend. My other is set up open the eos utility.