Photographic frustration

Sorry readers. This is about cameras and memory cards, and all sorts of boring forum stuff. It will probably only appeal to a handful of you, so feel free to delete it without reading on.

New camera. Check. New memory card. Check. Sunny weather, and afternoon walk with Ollie. Check.

Off I go, determined to satisfy all of you who have asked to see some photos. Beetley Meadows, the small river, Ollie in the water, and Norfolk nettles. (The county plant) All on the agenda. Waiting for the light to come from the west after 2.30 pm, I have the camera set up with Kodachrome film simulation, aperture priority set at f 5.6 on the lens, +1 sharpness, and auto ISO set within a range of 200-800. With the electronic viewfinder showing adjustments made with the exposure compensation dial, I am soon snapping happily.

The viewfinder is so clear, I don’t need to resort to the rear screen at all. The Fuji X30 is remarkably small and light, and I have to keep looking down, to make sure that I am actually holding a camera. I get some good mixed ‘greens’, various views of the meadows, and some of Ollie in the river. I explore the wooded areas for a nice close-up of some bark, and even try some close-focus flowers, but it was quite breezy. I keep the settings the same, to try to get a consistent set of images, only using exp/comp as the light changes slightly. The 28-112 (equivalent) lens has a manual zoom ring that is a joy to use, and the shutter is remarkably quiet.

I set a target of fifty frames, and that takes around an hour, allowing for interaction with Ollie. At the end of the walk, I am keen to get back home, check the results in interior light, and get the better ones loaded up onto wordpress, ready for my first ‘proper’ photo post. The three-inch screen shows them up quite well; I am happy with at least ten of them, and most of the rest are still reasonable as ‘snapshots.’ I pick six, and think of suitable descriptions to write. The card is removed from the camera and inserted in my PC card slot.

Nothing. The computer shows the memory card as ‘Removable Disk (F),’ and that is empty.

Try again. And again. Still nothing. I put the card in the camera, and the photos are still there. Put it back in the PC, and nothing can be viewed. Like a cheap magic trick. I don’t have an external card reader for SDHC cards, and the camera doesn’t come with a PC/USB cable. So I turn to Antony, my photographic guru, and send him an e mail. He makes some sensible suggestions, but they don’t work. He suggests formatting the card, which will lose all the images. That’s also sensible advice, but I want to keep them, at least for a couple of days.

I decide to order a card reader online. It’s only £4, so not much to lose if it doesn’t work. Then I get on the forums, which turn out to be hit and miss. So, I ask a question at Sandisk (the memory card company) support, and begin to see what the problem might be. I have a Hewlett Packard PC. It is quite modern, bought in 2012, (running Windows 7 though) with a Pentium i3 processor. It generally works well, and I have been happy with it. But according to Sandisk, if it was made after 2008, it should have an SDHC compliant sticker near the card slot. It doesn’t. This could mean that it will not recognise anything other than normal SD cards, of less than 4 GB capacity. If this turns out to be true, it suggests that HP sold me an old-stock PC as a new item. It was discounted, but they didn’t say that it might be four-year old technology. Lesson learned. If this is not the case, then maybe the card reader has broken or malfunctioned, and I will be off to the PC repair shop.

A pleasant afternoon, rekindling my photographic interests, and looking forward to seeing the results. This turns into an evening spent almost entirely at the computer, trying to resolve a computer problem.
And I still haven’t seen the photos. I will let you know what happens, if anyone cares.

I won’t blame you if you don’t.