CF Card error in 5d mark iii, now missing half photos from card. Any hope?

buckeyevet · Nov 1, 2017

Hello all. I am desperate for help here, but please be patient with this semi- computer and semi-camera savvy amateur photographer.

I have a less than year old 5d mark iii. I have a Sandisk 64GB Extreme Pro CF card and a Sandisk 64GB Extreme Pro SDXC card mounted in it. I format both cards before starting to use them, and every time I remove the cards and transfer the images to my computer. I shoot in RAW and jPEG. That said...what happened yesterday has me perplexed and a little panicked.

The memory cards had approximately 100 photos from a vacation in April on it. I took about 50-75 photos on a trip in September. I used the camera 2 days ago to take pictures of our carved pumpkins...with plenty of space left on the cards. All the photos were reviewable in the camera's LCD.

When I went to take some photos of my child in his Halloween costume last night, the memory card light was solid red/not flashing like usual, and there was an error message that Card 1 could not be accessed, and needed to be formatted.

I know, shame on me for not transfering the April photos and formatting the card like every other time before. I would have done so promptly but life got in the way.

I removed both the CF and SD cards, then plugged the SD card into the reader on my computer. The only photos I can find on the SD card are from the trip in April. The September and pumpkin photos are not there! I don't have a CF reader, yet--Amazon will deliver one soon.

I double checked my settings in camera. It is set to record on both the CF and SD cards. I have the option to release the shutter without a card turned off.

Is there anything I can do to try to get the photos off of the SD or CF cards at this point? This is where I am frankly at a loss. I don't fully understand how some photos can be there, and others not there. Especially on the card that was not the focus of the error message on the camera. I don't have any idea how/what I can do to "find" these missing photos on either card. Does what happened make any sense to anyone? What should/can I do next.

Thank you in advance for your advice and guidance.

--
Jennifer

laurenr · Nov 13, 2017

were you able to find a solution to recover your images? i just had the same thing happen to me and am looking for help! thanks!

Arthur Stanley Jefferson · Nov 13, 2017

if you use sandisk, you probably got a free years trial of their rescue pro software. Try installing that first, it's a bit clunky their registration/activation process, but the software found some very important shots for me once so it works well, although it re-numbers the recovered shots.

Now the missing shots, might not be missing....! I always set my 5Dmk3's to record raw to cf and jpeg to sd, ( both cards are matched in writing speed)

I remember one situation when I had removed the sd card to give jpegs to client , and when I had reinserted it something odd happened. Instead of splitting the shots to different cards, it had instead put both the raw & jpegs to the cf card only and nothing was writing to the sd. I was also recording to multiple folders and it had put them in the last used folder on the cf. So...It had reverted to standard recording method instead of separate. I nearly had a heart attack when I went to download the next batch of jpegs and they weren't on the sd card, but were on the cf.

so you might find the shots are there on the cf card. Try that first. Then run the rescue software (free with any sandisk card).

Between jobs, i format all cards in my mac, then again in camera. I try not to delete in camera, but if I do I do it slowly and never share cards between cameras.

Hope you get them back, good luck

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CF Card error in 5d mark iii, now missing half photos from card. Any hope?

buckeyevet

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laurenr

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Arthur Stanley Jefferson

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