Not too long ago I was hired to shoot some stills at an event hosted by a local city council. The job itself was nothing I haven't done a million times in the past-- shooting a live event (in often trying lighting conditions). I completed the job without a hitch, that is until I tried to copy my footage.
I had a CF card failure. This is the type of thing that every videographer, photographer, dp, camera operator or director fears. We've all heard of it happening, myself included. I had never experienced it until now. The images were gone. I knew not to panic, so I began methodically working through the problem. I verified that it was indeed the card that had failed, and not the RAID, Card Reader, USB Ports, or even the computer. I began searching for a data retrieval program. I found one and got to work.
It didn't take long for my images to reappear. I promptly retrieved them and backed them up. I didn't end up losing anything.
I guess there are a couple of take aways from this:
-Stay calm, have a cup of tea. Then work through your problem
-Failures can happen, have fail safes in place.
-If you're experiencing a problem, someone else has probably gone through it too.
-NEVER RECORD OVER A CORRUPTED CARD. It will make recovery harder or impossible.
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