A friend and student, the other day, would not let me format her memory card. “Nooo”, she almost shouted. The reason? Some Internet-famous wedding/family/baby photographer said, on her blog, that formatting is harmful for memory cards.

That is spectacularly bad advice. Let me assure you that not only is formatting a card not harmful, it is beneficial for you. Without formatting each time, eventually, memory errors such as lost clusters, excessive fragmentation, and so on will creep in and destroy your content. natural degradation will not result in areas being mapped out, as would happen if you formatted. Of course data loss can happen anyway (see yesterday’s post), but the chances are greater if all you do is delete rather than format. Bad, bad idea.

Where did this photographer get the idea that formatting is bad? What qualifies her to give opinions on technical issues like this? Now, I do not know this photographer; I do not even know her name,. What I do know is that her advice is bad. Perhaps she has an electrical engineering degree, like me, but that does not mean she cannot be wrong. And here, she is.

Which brings me to today’s subject: the Internet is a dangerous place, full of misinformation. Read, but read more, and read counter-opinions, and check out the writer’s qualifications. I would ask Sandisk and Lexar, or canon and other camera makers. And I am pretty sure they’ll recommend that you format a memory card after, or rather before, each use.

Yes, formatting wears out a drive, as does every type of writing to it. But only after many write cycles—think millions. If you format a card hourly for half a century, you may perhaps see degradation. But that is hardly likely, is it?

My moral: careful whom you believe. Hesitate before you take legal advice from me, dental hygiene advice from an obstetrician, or electronics advice from a baby photographer of some repute. Just sayin’.

Oh yes, and format those cards. Frequently. Every time.

A word, and a few tips, about memory cards. And how today, another CF card lost its content during—in the middle of—a shoot.

My CF card failed with “error reading contents” while importing into Lightroom, during a commercial shoot today. This was a CF card, connected to my Macbook Pro through a card reader, on location. Embarrassing to say the least.

I suspect the card reader is the issue, since this is the second card in a month, same way. Regardless, I lost the contents and had to reshoot a part of my shoot. Ironically, this happened after I had, just moments earlier, remarked to my assistant that I was taking a risk, shooting part of this shoot on a Canon 7D, which does not allow saving the same issue to two cards simultaneously. And sure enough. Note to self: use the 1Dx every time, not almost every time.

Ten Tips for memory cards:

1. After use, format your memory cards; do not “delete all images”.
2. Do this formatting every time—after you make and verify a backup of the photos, of course.
3. Do it in the camera, never on the computer.
4. If a piece of equipment fails, discard it. Take no chances.
5. Use cards that are as fast as you need—no faster or slower.
6. Use cards that are as large as you need—no larger or smaller. I recommend that you use multiple smaller cards, not one large one. I use 16 GB cards and 8 GB cards.
7. Push cards in, and pull them out, gently and slowly. And preferably after you turn off the equipment’s power.
8. Unmount the cards before removing them from the computer.
9. Deleting is never permanent; formatting may or may not be.
10. You can often recover bad images. Both Lexar and Sandisk offer utilities that help recover images from “bad” cards.

My assistant today was Maged:

As always, he offered good advice; he was a “second pair of eyes”, which is what a good assistant should be.

Here’s that group shot with a little post-crop vignetting:

But we could go the other way for effect, and vignette positively:

I have never done that, but one day I will.

Part of today was a “green screen” shoot:

The green will be replaced by whatever background the client wishes to use for the image. That’s how green screen works (see tips on this blog for its use). Somewhat like this, where I made the background transparent:

And now, back to finishing my images. After I unpack the truck, that is. Photography keeps me fit.

I shoot RAW always. But today I shot JPG, in a corporate annual report shoot.

One of those started off as a JPG; one as a RAW. Can you tell the difference?

No. And that is the point: if you expose well, and need no changes, JPG is fine. It is because we don’t always shoot well and get all settings right, and because we sometimes want changes, that we shoot RAW.

So why did I shoot JPG?

Because my main memory card went south in the middle of a this all day corporate shoot. I lost the RAW pictures. Yes, cards go bad randomly sometimes.

So I used the backup pics, the JPGs I wrote onto card 2 in my 1Dx. Thank God for the dual card system.

Fun shoot, and the day was saved thanks to this camera feature.

I am so tired at 2:15Am that I cannot type. But I want ed to share this, one more time: Please, please, please make backups of everything, always. Please, please, please make backups of everything, always.Please, please, please make backups of everything, always.

A note for fellow owners of the Canon 1Dx — but in general, for all others too: it always pays to learn your camera inside out.

You use your camera by looking through the viewfinder only, as you are shooting. That is the way to do it quickly and, if you will, professionally. Never take your eye off.

The problem is that you can change aperture and shutter and instantly see the meter move, without taking your eye from the viewfinder. But ISO? You need to find a button, and while you adjust the ISO value, the meter display goes away. So finding the right exposure by adjusting ISO is an iterative process: trial and error. Takes time. Not professional.

Until you know the camera!

The solution:

1. Go to the Quick menu (“Q”)
2. In that, navigate to the bottom right option, “Custom Controls“.
3. In that screen, go to the SET Button.
4. Adjust it to Set ISO Speed (hold btn, turn wheel).

Now to set ISO while looking through the viewfinder, you simply press the SET button and turn the front wheel. ISO adjusts and the meter still displays throughout the process. Problem solved!

Owners of a 5D MkIII: is it the same? Other cameras: same?

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