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06-04-2011, 09:42 AM   #1
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Desperate for help! I'm backpacking through Europe!

Hello everyone, thanks for reading. I'm currently in holland staying with family for a few days before taking a month to backpack around france, italy, spain, switzerland and wherever else fate takes me. Before i left the states, i bought my friends K200D off of him, and was shooting back home for a few weeks with no problem. Now that i get here, i have some MAJOR issues. The camera, for whatever reasons, does not want to write pictures to the disk. I have a PNY 8 gig professional SD card. I'll just walk you through it real quick. I've taken about 200 pictures so far on my trip. When i turn on the camera and hit the review button the screen says "no image". This is obviously not true. But then, if i take a quick shot of anything, i can hit the review button and it shows me the pictures i've taken....only recently. Last night, i took pictures of a meadow by moonlight and i could review them after i took them. Today, all i can see are pictures from lunch. This is even more frustrating as the computer i'm using says there is NOTHING on my card. I bought a simple SD to USB adapter today, and when i plugged it into my aunt's PC the card reads as completely blank! I can still view todays pictures on the camera from lunch and the computer says there is nothing on the card!

Please help! This is the trip of a lifetime and i'm not able to get ANY SHOTS! I emailed pentax but they are slow to respond and every second i lose more and more shots. Do i just need a new card? Is my camera completely screwed? Is there something i'm just missing? HELP PLEASE!

06-04-2011, 10:00 AM   #2
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Sounds to me like the card is roached. You could try formatting it In the Computer and do a Full format, not just a wipe clean. Any card problems I've ever had have been fixed that way if the card wasn't trashed. If you have photos on there you want to make sure you keep, you may need a good recovery program to retrieve them (before formatting). My advice is to get a couple or few 4-8 gb cards. You aren't doing Video with a K200 so you don't need anything extremely fast. Class 6 would suffice,

Good luck and enjoy your trip. Sounds like a lot of fun.

06-04-2011, 10:09 AM   #3
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Save your existing card for when you have time to retrieve the images with specialty software. Then go out and buy a number of cheaper low speed memory cards. Spreading your pictures around to more than one card will ensure that if any one card has problems, you won't lose the whole trip. memory cards have a finite number of times you can write to them. Sorry about the problems, its a bummer. Enjoy the trip!
06-04-2011, 10:13 AM   #4
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I don't know when the change happened butthere might be a firmware update for SD HC cards. Check you firmware version by holding the menu button when you turn it on and then check the latest version on the pentax official site

06-04-2011, 10:56 AM   #5
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Yeah, looks like a firmware update might help: Latest K200D Firmware Update : Software Downloads : PENTAX

And try some other SD cards (no need for superfast ones on the K200D anyway).
06-04-2011, 10:58 AM   #6
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Two questions just to address the "Is there something I'm just missing?" question.

1) The computer shows NOTHING on the card or it just shows no photos on the card? I ask this because I just explained this to my dad for the 4th time last night, the photos are stored in separate folders (by date) under the DCIM folder, and you (may) have to navigate there to find them.

2) If you select one of today's photos and turn the edial that you use to zoom in on the photo, only turn it the other way to zoom out (so you see all of today's photos displayed as thumbnails) can you move around those photos and find folders with other days' dates? If so, select one of those and you'll see the that days' photos.

Edit: I know those probably sound like foolish questions, especially since you used the camera for weeks at home, but the first few months I had my K10d I always downloaded my photos to my computer as soon as I finished taking them. On camera, I didn't even know that folders existed, until I was out of town without my usb cable, accumulated several days worth of photos, and was surprised when I accidentally zoomed out to the thumbnail view. I very, very, rarely zoom out to thumbnail view. As far as my dad goes, one of his computers brings up his photos, the other the root folder, which he takes as empty.

Last edited by KyPainter; 06-04-2011 at 11:14 AM.
06-04-2011, 12:47 PM   #7
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Yes, i navigated the directory, and there are no files anywhere. When i zoom out in the review screen, it just shows the one folder for that day. I really appreciate all the help guys, i don't want to waste another minute of my trip not getting some great photos. Unfortunately, the stores in holland are all closed on sunday, so i'll have to get a new card on monday. Hopefully that can fix everything. Thanks again for the quick replies guys, you're the best!

06-04-2011, 05:22 PM   #8
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sandisk FTW.
06-04-2011, 08:56 PM   #9
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Get a few cards. I'm not sure about your specific camera, but I may not be able to use an 8GB without the firmware update. You'll need a blank card to do the update, and you don't want to touch that old card until you've had a chance to try some recovery software to maybe save some or all of the shots on it. You might just try to find several 2GB cards.

Also, when you put a new card in the camera, format it in the camera before shooting anything on it. Do it in the camera, not on a computer. Avoid using the delete feature to delete individual shots (or all shots) from the card. When you are ready to wipe the card then use the in-camera format (but only after you are certain you have the shots saved someplace else, and maybe backed up). Another option is to just have a lot of cards and don't erase them at all during the trip.

Whatever happens, enjoy your trip.
06-04-2011, 11:58 PM   #10
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The images you are seeing are probably the last few taken stored in the cameras buffer. Sounds like your firmware has not been updated to be able to use SDHC cards. When you get a new card make sure it doesn't say SDHC on it. Usually 2 gigabyte or less.
06-05-2011, 05:37 PM   #11
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Check here

I asked about a listing of software upgrades and cameras

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/forum-suggestions-news-help/146593-questi...ml#post1531422
06-05-2011, 06:35 PM   #12
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I don't know about your specific card, but the K200 went longer than pretty much any other Pentax camera without a firmware upgrade, and certainly never needed one to utilize any of the 4, 8, or 16gb cards I've used. So I wouldn't have a high degree of confidence that firmware is an issue. Unlike the K100, every K200 shipped with the capability of using SDHC cards.

If you can review photos after taking them, they have to be being written to the card. The camera has no other way of storing them other than a very few in its buffer. I can't believe they're being deleted when you power off the camera or remove the the card. Assuming you're shooting raw, the capacity of the buffer is something like 3 pictures. It would be interesting if you can only review the number of pictures in the buffer. It seems like the card is always accessed for viewing pictures, but I'm not sure, maybe its capable of reading from the buffer first. Perhaps someone else knows.

Certainly try another card; you never want to rely on just one.

Paul
06-05-2011, 07:34 PM   #13
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After looking it up, the K200D does not need a firmware update to use SDHC cards. It does however need an update to use some SDHC cards reliably. According to Pentax:

Changes to V1.01

  • The following content have been improved in Version 1.01.
    Improved stability of recording image for some SDHC Memory card.
So if your firmware has not been updated and you can't update it right now you may still be better off using SD cards of 2gb or less. Did you use the 8gb card without problems before the trip?
06-06-2011, 04:20 PM   #14
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Maybe your SD card reader is not SDHC compliant? I had this same kind of problems when I bought my first 8Gb sd card, my (old) reader kept corrupting the contents... Bought a new one, everything is right now...
06-06-2011, 04:38 PM   #15
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I presume you don't have the write-protect switch on the SD card set to 'LOCK'....

I'm also another one that suggests playing it safe by getting a SD card from a maker recommended by Pentax as compatible, like SanDisk. So get a SanDisk card, and format it in camera prior to use.
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