Question on Memory Cards

[suezpqt]

I will admit - I really have limited and I do mean limited knowledge about digital cameras.
A friend of mine has told me that the more pictures you delete from the cards that the next picture that goes on it will not be as clear and defined. I personally think that he is nuts - what is the sense of the cards than?
I am leaving for Disney in 22 days and want to make sure that my pictures come out as good as I can get them.
Thanks for your input/thoughts.

 

[Boss Hogg]

Sounds bit like cobblers to me! I guess that over a large period of time and an immense number of pictures, this could logically be expected, but I don't think it is anything to worry about in "normal" situations.

I've certainly never noticed it and I've taken thousands upon thousands on the same card.

 

[Anewman]

False.

But if in doubt you can reformat the card every once in a while.

 

[Jeanne B]

I've read that it's always better to delete the pictures by reformatting the card rather than individually deleting the pictures (which I have a habit of doing when on vacation) but I've never read anything about pictures being less clear or defined.

 

[suezpqt]

Thank you all for the responses! I kind of thought that the statement my friend made was not so true. Can't tell him that though - he knows all!!! LOL .
I guess I will have to read my book to see how to reformat the card as I only delete the pictures.

 

[boBQuincy]

It's ones and zeros, nothing else.
In other words, the memory cells on the card will read back what is written to them, image clarity is not a function of the memory card. There is also no difference between cards with regards to image quality.

Memory cards do fail, but very rarely from a lot of use. When they fail you will see a lot more than poorly defined images, you will see color bars, half images, maybe no image at all. It isn't a subtle change.

The cards are typically rated for 100,000+ cycles, and even then they map out cells that have reached the cutoff point, using cells that have less use. Most of us will never reach that cutoff point.

Formatting the cards is a good idea, but it has little to do with data corruption. Erasing a file here, a file there results in a fragmented card, where a new file may be larger than the erased one and is segmented into pieces. This doesn't mean it will not read accurately, but it will write/read slower than a file that is contiguous.
For that reason, it is good to format the cards.

Fire away, your cards will likely outlive your camera and still faithfully deliver whatever data the camera writes to them.

 

[WillCAD]

Yes, your friend is nuts.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Definitely nuts.

The memory card will store almost every picture perfectly almost every time. The only exception is when an error occurs, which is pretty rare with a CF card. If an error occurred, it is very likely that it would manifest itself in the form of a horribly corrupted photo rather than some gentle softening.

It is possible that the misunderstanding derives from a real problem. When you save a picture as a JPG (the most common photo file format), it compresses the file in a way that throws out information it doesn't feel is important. If you repeatedly open and save the file, each successive save throws away more information. This gradually reduces detail and adds noise to the photo. If you must open, edit, and save a photo repeatedly, use a file format that doesn't throw away data.

 

[muphoto]

A good software program to have on hand is one from Media Recovery.

It will recover images from a card if the file has been erased or if the Corrupt message comes up. It has saved me quite a few times.

It also has a tool that allows you to "wipe" all of the images off of the card, even getting rid of more information than re-formatting alone.