Since updating to windows 10, I have lost the ability to download pictures straight from my camera onto the computer using the Picasa programme which I find very useful.
Picasa acknowledges that my camera is connected, but says there are no pictures to download. If I remove the memory card from the camera, and put it into the computer port directly, it will then down load the pictures.
Has anyone any idea what's wrong?
Regards,
BrianT.
Hullo!
I had just the same problem until I clicked bottom left corner, selected 'Control Panel', 'Default Programmes', then from the list of installed programmes selected [in my case] Faststone rather than Picassa, and then 'Set all this programme's defaults'.
Thereafter I could download from the camera as normal, hope this helps,
Doug
Thank you to all who have replied to my problem.
I have not resolved it yet, but that is my fault for not understanding some of your instructions, or not being able to find the appropriate button to press.
Thank you all.
BrianT.
If you can live with taking the card out of the camera, I'd go with that; transfer should be faster anyway than over the cable.
It may be a software driver issue, which might take a while to get sorted out.
Perhaps worth mentioning that Google are no longer supporting Picasa, I.e. there will be no further updates.
I have the same problem with downloading my wife's camera but we use Windows XP.
Malcolm
In my family we must have had over a dozen digital cameras over the years and since the first one or two nobody has used the camera software that comes with it at all. You need a card reader if you haven't got one on your computer - they are quite cheap I think.
Just take the card out of the camera, put it in the card reader and it will be recognised as a new external drive. Copy the files into wherever you want them on your computer and bob's your uncle! Don't forget to put the card back in the camera and as a sort of confidence/safety check I always switch the camera on, off and on again to make sure it recognises that the card is back where it usually lives.
Probably over 50000 image files transferred from cameras to PCs over the years in this way without problems to any of the cards (touch wood)
Mick
Quote from: MickT on June 15, 2016, 12:46
they are quite cheap I think.
Poundland do them.
Bugger! I think I paid
AS I started this query, I will just add that I have resolved the difficulties I was experiencing, and I can now down load straight from my camera to the computer.
I don't like having to remove the card to access it's contents, I'm sure lots of people do this on a regular basis, but these kinds of interfaces have a limited fit and remove applications, so if you don't need to do it, then in my opinion, don't.
Thank you to all who have replied.
Kind regards,
BrianT.
I originally bought a card reader as my old PC didn't have a card slot, and it's always worked fine with both old and new computers. Until, that is, I bought a 16GB card (useful for video, as when I caught the pair of Cl. 50s heading for Swanage last week) - with that in the card reader the PC doesn't even recognise the external drive, let alone the card. So I sit there getting more and more frustrated until I remember that I have to put that card in the slot in the PC...
David.
Never mind David, all part of the steep learning curve!!
Yesterday I found myself in a Poundland in Bournemouth and stocked up on one of the
Thanks for the tip on the film Mick, it is a lot more expesnive elsewhere. I shall have to go and have a look.
Frank
I got a proper internal one for the old 3.5" drive that my new computer had with nothing in it! It does work better than the external ones, recognising everything I've put in it so far, though I've only used the SD and USB ports so far!
Did you happen to check the 'best before' date on that film, Mick? - it might be inedible by now!
While I'm sure there are purists who have never stopped using it (and still swear that it produces superior results), I can't see myself ever going back to film. Digital is just too easy, flexible and cheap. (Did I - an arch Luddite - really just say that? Oh well, maybe there are some 'modern' things which really are an improvement on the old - though I'm hard pushed to think of anything else!)
David.
I am always reminded when we show Lochsanda and show people the 1960s queue for the telephone box. I know that mobiles can be very annoying as well but look at how life has been transformed through their use.
While we're on the topic of camera storage cards, I meant to ask for advice on the best way to clear a card. There seem to be two options (apart from deleting pictures one by one): 'delete all' or 'format card'.
Intuitively I tend to favour the latter, though I cannot really explain why.
Which is the better way? Advice appreciated!
David.
If you select delete all you may probably be able to recover the files if you decide you made a mistake, whereas format will get rid of them permanently. Also format will probably reset the file system on the card so the images get written in contiguous blocks rather then fragmented blocks.
For what it's worth, when I have attended an event and taken loads of photos (usually between 2 to 300 or so, up to 500 for the big do's such as NGS Expong, NGSW etc, I copy the images onto my PC hard drive, then do the resizing, editing etc; select the ones that will be used for 009 News and any other mags if I've been asked to provide any, do the selection for the online reports on my blogsite and then once I have done everything, captions etc, and completed up to and including uploading to my site, I then back the folder up onto a DVD from the PC, which by now has the original file images, a sub folder with the resized and edited images and a sub folder with the images that have been uploaded to my blogsite via Picasaweb for the "roving report"
Only then do I delete the images from the SD card in the camera. To cut the waffle and answer your question directly, I do the deleting from the camera and do it on the "delete all" function. I've had the SD card that is in my camera for at least 2 years, possibly 3 and touch wood have not had any problems with it. I'm not sure if re-formatting it every time you want to clear the files from the card will do it any good.
Mick
Interesting - that formatting a card might not do it any good...
Given what Hugh says about possible recovery of deleted photos, the implication is that after deleting there is still assorted stuff (?junk ?useful) left on the card, like all the clag which accumulates on a PC with time, which I assumed was better wiped than retained. But maybe not. Hugh also suggests that fragmented blocks are better than contiguous ones, which I wouldn't dispute for a moment, not having any real clue how these things operate!
But I will happily defer to the wisdom of experts and just 'delete all' in future.
David.
P.S. No wonder I keep having difficulty tracking down some of these threads, as they all seem to come under the heading of 'Prototype Information'! Maybe the 'General' section could usefully moved elsewhere - perhaps to a section of its own?
Quote from: clayliner on July 15, 2016, 21:23
Interesting - that formatting a card might not do it any good...
Given what Hugh says about possible recovery of deleted photos, the implication is that after deleting there is still assorted stuff (?junk ?useful) left on the card, like all the clag which accumulates on a PC with time, which I assumed was better wiped than retained. But maybe not. Hugh also suggests that fragmented blocks are better than contiguous ones, which I wouldn't dispute for a moment, not having any real clue how these things operate!
But I will happily defer to the wisdom of experts and just 'delete all' in future.
David.
P.S. No wonder I keep having difficulty tracking down some of these threads, as they all seem to come under the heading of 'Prototype Information'! Maybe the 'General' section could usefully moved elsewhere - perhaps to a section of its own?
Formatting a memory card will not harm or damage it.
As with all digital storage devices, be it hard drives, flash memory, or whatever, when you delete a file it isn't actually removed, the space that it occupies is merely marked as being available to write to. Most devices will write to 'empty space' first before overwriting any files that are deleted. This is how you end up with fragmented files. Because a deleted file still exists until the space it occupies is overwritten you can recover that file.
A storage device that has lots of fragmented files is slower to read from and write to due to device having to search for various bits of data in order to reconstruct the file, or break the file up to write it over several sectors/clusters. This used to be a major problem with older slower devices, hence why routine defraging was recommended. It's probably not as big a problem as it used to be due to the much faster read/write speeds of modern devices.
By simply deleting files you actually leave a marker (or record) on the storage media noting that the space has been marked for reuse, these markers are only a few bytes but eventually they all add up and reduce the capacity of the storage device, though not significantly to make any serious difference to available space.
So to sum up - formatting your memory cards is a better option than simply deleting the files, though to fair, unless you either use very old, or very high end pro equipment, you probably wouldn't notice the difference. And contiguous files are better than fragmented ones.
Hope this answers a few questions.
Regards,
Darren.
I agree with everything Darren says in his post as this is how data media work. Once I have downloaded images from an SD card and made sure that they are safe I always reformat the card. Modern cards are, as MickT says, are very reliable but if you want to reduce risk to a minimum then, in my opinion, reformatting is the only way to go. It means that write speeds are optimum for the card which is especially important for video work, for instance if you buy the more expensive SDXC cards then a newly formatted card will guarantee that you get the manufacturers claimed write speed. When it comes to using cards with cameras then to reduce risk to a minimum then reformatting is the safest option as well because any files saved to the card will be written as contiguous blocks in memory.
When is all said and done about SD cards (or any other type for that matter) then the key, in my view, is adequate backup facilities behind the basic computer storage. It is wise to have at least two or three places where images are stored, whether these are hard disks or on the cloud is a matter of taste. CDs or DVDs are probably one alternative that many would think of in this context but they are not a permanent solution as they can lose data over the medium to long term. If you decide on using either of these media then they need to be re-copied at regular intervals to ensure that the data is safe.
Quote from: clayliner on July 15, 2016, 21:23
Interesting - that formatting a card might not do it any good...
Given what Hugh says about possible recovery of deleted photos, the implication is that after deleting there is still assorted stuff (?junk ?useful) left on the card, like all the clag which accumulates on a PC with time, which I assumed was better wiped than retained. But maybe not. Hugh also suggests that fragmented blocks are better than contiguous ones, which I wouldn't dispute for a moment, not having any real clue how these things operate!
No - actually I inferred that contiguous blocks are "better" than fragmented ones. But in reality there's not much time hit on accessing fragmented files on solid-state storage like there is on a traditional hard disk.