Memory card question

[d's do disney]

I've been playing with my new camera and taking alot of pics. While I was switching memory cards, I noticed something.

I have 2 512mb SD cards. The camera is set at Super Fine and Large compression.

The question is this: one card will allow 180 pics and the other one only has room for 111 pics. Both were empty and recently reformatted.

Am I missing something???

Thanks for your help, this board has been great!!!

 

[ukcatfan]

This could be many different things. You should check them both out on the pc to see if there is anything different. On some cameras, the format feature only deletes what it is expecting to be there and then it recreates the folder structure. There could be other data there that you will need to manually remove. Another possibility is that there are bad sectors that the camera knows it cannot use. It is also possible that the one showing smaller is actually smaller. Products sometimes get mislabeled. It could also be a counterfeit item that is not really what they say it is. Based on your reported capacity differences, this is unlikely, but still possible.

Kevin

 

[Groucho]

How recent was the formatting?

I can't believe that there are so many bad sectors that it would make you lose about a third of the card's capacity.

I would re-format the cards in the camera. If they truly are 512m cards, you should have identical amount of free space on each.

Memory cards generally have very long warranties, so if one is bad, you can probably get it replaced.

 

[d's do disney]

I had formatted them in an old HP digital the last time they were downloaded. But, I just reformatted them in my Canon S3 and you were correct Groucho, it worked

They both have 180 pics available.

I don't know why that didn't seem obvious to me (to reformat in the new camera). You guys are the best. I felt so silly asking but now I'm glad I did.