Overwhelmed by new digital camera?
 

Just went out today to update my Canon Eos Rebel by getting their new Rebel Digital camera. Bought the whole shebang with extra lenses, 2 gig card, Epson portable media viewer, new Quantaray camera backpack, etc.

Since I had used the Canon Rebel SLR on my previous trips I figured it wouldn't be too much of a jump to the digital. WRONG!!! My husband, son and I have all tried simply inserting the 2 gig card and start taking a few pix at home to familiarize ourselves with the camera and each time we get a Error Code 99 on the card, take the battery out and try again and the same thing continues to happen. Thus I will have to go back to the store tomorrow and have them either tell me what I am doing wrong, or see if the card may be defective. Then I'll sign up for several of their courses.

In looking over the instruction book it really seems very complicated. For those of you who are newbies to digital, how long did it take you to feel comfortable with your camera? Hope I'm not too old to learn.

Jan

Did you format the memory card before using it?

Don't give up especially since you're an experience SLR photographer. The switch to digital is not that hard. Here's a link to a web site that might help you get started.

http://www.canon.co.jp/Imaging/enjoydslr/index.html

She is right -- you need to format the card first. It should be on the menu and it is easy to do.

Digital is different although the principals of photography do not change. Look around where you live to see if there is a course you could take -- we did it and it was very helpful.

We had the Canon EOS and went to the 20D this year -- our photos from this safari were much better.

One more thing -- go back to the camera store where you purchased it and ask them to walk you through using it. They should be more than willing to help you learn to use it.

Jan,

This might help:

http://www.richardsnotes.org/archive...ontact-points/

I know just what you mean!!!! I used to use a nikon slr, and about a month ago got my new Panasonic FZ30, and wow! Just looking throught the evf is a different experience! I am a complete amateur anyway, so this is a challenge. I'm sure your camera is very different than mine, but Julien gave me some good (and reassuring) advice about using the fz30 in the following post (near the bottom):
http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...51&start=0

Good luck, don't give up, and if you get any good tips, let me know! :-)

Cyn

Jan

When I went from film SLR to digital I too found that it took a while to climb the learning curve - quite a steep one.

I don't know what the error message is referring to but I hope you can sort it out soon.

Main areas for me to learn were a proper understanding of Raw/ JPEG/ Tiff as well as resolution, dpi etc. plus White Balance settings and how to use them effectively.

GOOD LUCK!

Thanks to all for your insight and citing some good websites. I have marked some as favorites to help in learning.

I went back to the camera shop this morning. The gentleman saw my camera wasn't working, put my card in his demo camera and it worked fine. Thus he started looking more closely at my camera and found a bent pin where the card is inserted. Because I had just purchased the camera yesterday they gave me a new camera. I had him put my card in it to be sure it worked with the new camera and everything is now fine even without formatting the card. ? why does the card need to be formatted if it works fine without?

Now I will have fun teaching myself how to take pictures, delete from camera, transfer pix from camera to Epson P-2000 (which I love so far - perhaps I won't even have to take my laptop with me), and then load pix from camera and Epson to laptop, just the basic stuff.

Based on my previous usage of a regular Canon EOS Rebel, I will probably do a lot in automatic mode, except for evening and night shooting.

So many menus to learn. Those of you who have already succeeded learning all this stuff have my admiration!

Again, thanks for all your help.

If the card works fine it wont need formatting. It could have solved the problem if the problem WASN'T the bent pin.

I love my SLR Digital... although I went for the Pentax *ist D... with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens and a 2x matched converter. I guess it's best to set it up like you were used to with your film camera... iso etc. I am experimenting more with depth of field. It's great to be able to see results so quickly and I've found my composition has improved no end.

Jan
It's good practice to reformat the card (in the camera, not using the computer) everytime you've emptied it fully.
Deleting images using the delete function doesn't actually delete the data written onto the card - it just updates the "index" which notes down which bytes of the card hold the data for each image file. What reformatting the card does is it actually properly wipes all the previous data off providing a fully clean space into which to write the new image data.
I believe it reduces the chance of data corruption.
Certainly when floppy disks were commonly used it was far more common to come across corrupted data when the same disk was used again and again (for different data) without being reformatted in between.
It's always preferable to reformat within the camera as the card is then reformatted to the camera's preferred specs.
Kavey

Kavey:

Thanks so much for the explanation. Now it starts making sense to me. Since I have only taken a few pictures of the family with the 2 gig card, should I format it now also as a new disk or just continue using as is and then format after I have taken tons of pictures, transferred to the Epson and then want to delete all from card? So far I love the Epson-2000. Makes me think that perhaps I won't need to take my laptop after all. Looks like it stores about 40 gigs. Will have to play with things a little more though.

Again, many thanks for the help.

Jan

On holiday I usually empty the card at the end of each day (occasionally twice if I take a LOT of pics that day) - I empty it onto a portable storage device/ laptop. Only once I have copied it successfully to the backup do I then reformat it before reusing it on the next outing.

When using it at home I'll seldom fill it but usually prefer to download the images at the end of the session, empty the card and then reformat it before using it again. Even if I haven't filled it I'd rather have those images off the card and backed up onto my PC and elsewhere sooner rather than later. There's no need with the card to wait until it's full to empty/ reformat it.

So do it when it IS full but also at the end of a session of use even when not full. Copy your pictures off, make sure they copied off successfully (open them if you can) and only once you're sure you've got them do you then reformat the card ready for the next use.

Kavey:

Gotcha! You make a lot more sense in a couple of notes than the entire instruction booklet does!

Thanks again for your advice. I will follow it precisely.

Jan

You're welcome and good luck!