First Memory Card Failure in 20 Years of Digital Photography
Memory Card Failure:
This was my first memory card failure since I began shooting digital in the early 2000s. I have been very lucky. Although I lost an afternoon of street photography in Shinjuku, it was all personal and not a significant loss.
The primary concern is the cost. I lost a 512GB CFExpress card, which currently costs around 30,000 yen. I was hoping to purchase a unique lens while in Shinjuku, but that will have to wait until later. It often does; otherwise, I would have 100 lenses. In truth, I am looking for lenses with character, suitable for both video and stills.
Memory Card Memory Lane:
Vintage lenses had me thinking about my vintage memory cards. I have kept them all. They have only been retired for larger and faster capacity cards. My first card was a mere 515MB. It seemed massive at the time, as my computer only had 250 GB of storage.
The purchase price of the card was around $300 CAD. It was promptly used in a brand-new Nikon D70, equipped with a 6MP sensor. I traded in a Mamiya 645pro to purchase it. This was in the early 2000s, before Lightroom, and Camera Raw in Photoshop was limited to exposure and white balance adjustments. I believe Camera Raw would only open when importing a RAW file format.
I shot RAW right from the beginning, regularly filling up the memory card to capacity. The other thing I did regularly was to delete files from the computer to make room for all the image data. It wasn’t long before I had a second 512MB card and would often fill both cards up on a shoot.
Within a year, Apple released the first IMAC and not long after Aperture. This app was designed for editing digital images. I was a struggling student at the time and used my school’s Macs and a student version of Photoshop. I did covet the Apreture software. Not for its editing purposes, but its ability to catalogue all the images I had shot.
I did my best to catalogue everything by date and project, but it wasn't easy to find anything. Even searching within the right month, there were thousands of images to sift through. The whole process was very inefficient. Then came Adobe Lightroom. It was included with my Adobe student license, and it immediately organized dozens of folders, each containing hundreds of files.
I purchased the Nikon D200 and more memory cards, shooting with both bodies on any job I could get. Soon after, a new computer and external hard drives were purchased to back up the backups. My desk turned into a data center. Hard drives failed, computers died, and camera bodies were retired, but until this week, I had not lost a memory card.
Below is an image of my first 512MB memory card next to the failed 512GB card. It was a little sad to buy a new card, as it meant lens shopping was put on hold and my twenty-plus-year streak had come to an end.
512MB vs 512GB memory card
As always, I would love to hear your story in the comments below. If you feel so inclined, share a coffee with me. I am a flat white kind of guy. Happy shooting, everyone.
