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Question

Unable to view photos on card

Aug 21, 2011 2:29AM PDT

Hi eveyone,

I was wondering if someone would be able to answer the following. I have taken pictures with my Canon Rebel T3i and I was viewing them on playback in the camera as I have always done. Yesterday I was viewing some photos in the camera and 2 of them that I have seen in the camera on many occasions before said "Cannot playback image" but I can see the other 300 or so photos. What gives???

Thanks,

JPMLD

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Backup
Aug 21, 2011 3:52AM PDT

I don't have an answer to the problem, but you should backup your images by copying them to your hard drive, a CD, etc. Have you tried removing the card and viewing the images through your computer?

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Unable to view photos on card
Aug 21, 2011 5:25AM PDT

Hi,

Thank you for answering so promptly. Yes I have viewed the images on my computer and they are all there. It's just when I put the card back into the camera and that I view it from the camera that I cannot see those two photos. What puzzles me is that I have seen them from the camera many times before and then all of a sudden I cannot preview those 2 images any more.

Thanks again!


JPLD

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That's the clue I needed.
Aug 21, 2011 5:29AM PDT

My camera does this when I touch the photo in any way. For example I rotated a picture on the card and the camera no longer reads it.

THAT IS PROPER and I bet there is some nice long explanation why this is. But it has to do with the camera only understands what it produced and not what we make on the PC or other cameras.

Bob

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Unable to view photos on card
Aug 21, 2011 2:53PM PDT

Hi,

Thank you for your quick response. Your answer would make sense to me but I did not modify these 2 photos in any way. All I did was scroll through all the pictures to look at them in the camera. I still don't get it??!!!! Please let me know if you can think of anything else.

Thanks again!


JPLD

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Elusive Reasons
Aug 22, 2011 4:45AM PDT

There are many reasons this can happen.

Did you Format the Card with the CAMERA before using it for the first time?
You should have.

Have you ever put the card into a card reader attached to a computer?
If so;
Did you delete any pictures with the computer?
Did you write anything to the card with the computer?

Did you ever put that card in another camera?

Did you ever put that card in a "picture frame" device?

...

If you have not backed-up those 300 pictures, you are playing Russian Roulette.
Back them up today.

..

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Card is likely corrupting
Aug 22, 2011 1:45PM PDT

I think Elusive Reasons first question might be a possible candidate. When pictures start disappearing, it's usually due to the card never having been formatted in the camera. It's an important step. If you've never formatted the card with the camera's format function, I think you're going to notice this problem getting progressively worse. Of course keep in mind that formatting the card will also erase it. So ensure that you backup all your photos to your computer before doing so.

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What you don't want to know.
Aug 22, 2011 4:51AM PDT

Is that most versions of Windows do write to the card when we view the photos. It's pretty easy to spot as the properties of files list not only the creation and modification date the file was Accessed.

This means that we can never be sure if Windows touched it and created a problem.

Like I said, you don't want to know.
Bob