[Canada_Rockies]

Buy your cards from a reputable retailer. I got all three of mine from Galaxy Camera in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, because I live in Canada and they have a stellar reputation on eBay. B&H, Adorama, and many other photo shops on eBay are as good.

[Martin]

I really hope this is a card problem. I will buy a new card later this week and cross my fingers it works.

Martin

[Oldschool]

I just discovered the same problem on my K100D. I don't think it's the card as I have taken over 1000 pictures on this card. The only common denominator in all of this is that I used Windows standard functionality to copy these from my camera as I always do. With the camera still connected, I rotated several images. It's only these images that won't display. In the future, I will make sure the camera is disconnected before I do any editing. I think this will prevent it from happening again.

[Duck Dodgers]

I just discovered the same problem on my K100D. I don't think it's the card as I have taken over 1000 pictures on this card. The only common denominator in all of this is that I used Windows standard functionality to copy these from my camera as I always do. With the camera still connected, I rotated several images. It's only these images that won't display. In the future, I will make sure the camera is disconnected before I do any editing. I think this will prevent it from happening again.

If you're going to rotate the images anyway, why not let the camera do it?

Uh, I guess this applies more to K10D owners...or does the K100D have an auto-rotate feature like the K10D?

[marcdsgn]

Well, I may owe a debt of gratitude to ChipB for pointing me in the most likely direction for the cause of my problems...

On inspection of the same brand/type SD card from other retail outlets, it would seem some obvious discrepancies exist between their merchandise and the cards I purchased.

Hopefully, my attachment can be viewed here, in which case you can see the differences between the two examples. (Please ignore my Nikko scawl at top-right of card)

The telltale ridge at the bottom of genuine SanDisk cards is missing from my card, and (this is the profession graphic design coming out in me) there are a few clumsy design elements in the label composition compared to the label on the genuine card, including:

1) Inadequate space between the bottom edge of the label and the "SD" symbol (a definite graphic design no-no)
2) Minor differences in the brand logo at the top of the label (eg:the "registered" symbol is too large; scaling between uppercase and lowercase letters slightly different; point of the "D" is more rounded than pointed)
3) Different font for the "2.0GB" text, and VERY amateur kerning of the letters and numbers!
4) The curve between the two blue tones is too sharp.

...and another thing, the lock-tag seems to be fixed in place. I can't shift it!

Now, I'm not concluding that this is definite proof of a fake card, as it's possible mine is from older stock with an earlier less-professional label, but I wonder if the older cards still had the ridge at the bottom. If they did, then it's pretty safe to assume I have a couple of fakes on my hands.

In the meantime, I'll be informing eBay and the reseller who supplied me with the cards. If I can be sure that the cards are fake, I will gladly inform this forum of the seller's name and details, so that it can be blacklisted.

[ChipB]

Marc, sure hope the problem is with the SD cards and not your K10D (as my initial post suggested!!).

Martin/Nels, the issue of fake SD cards on eBay has been going on for some time - for whatever reason, eBay has NOT been able to police it, stop it or corral it. it really is disheartening to read that about 95% of SanDisk cards on eBay are counterfeit.

The only way we can combat it is to report the seller to eBay and file a claim with PayPal (if paid thru them). You can also disput the charge with your CC vendor if paid that way.

[elcahall]

I received this exact same error today on a large number of my pictures. I received a K10D for Christmas and have been learing how to use it. I was shooting JPEG. The card is a 1GB X-Media (not my first choice, it was all they had left, all the better brands were sold out). It was purchased at WalMart . The card has gone between the camera and my laptop several times so I can see what I shot as I learn how to use the camera. I might have rotated a minimal few of the pictures when reviewing them but I know for sure that I didn't save them. Although I'm not sure which shots I rotated and if those are the the ones that wouldn't display, I don't think that's the case. The one good thing for me is that when I took the card back out of the camera and plugged it back into the laptop (via a usb card reader) the pictures were able to be viewed, so they were immediately copied to my hard drive. I'm going to format the card in the camera and see if that makes a difference.

[stewart_photo]

As others have suggested, not all memory cards are equal. To avoid paying royalties or just to offer features others don't, some companies have made minor modifications to the internal formatting or programming, resulting in products not fully compatible with the SD card standard. Since Panasonic/Matsushita, SanDisk and Toshiba co-developed the SD card standard, I highly recommend shopping for one of these three brands. However, because of widespread pirating and counterfeiting, even a brand name on the label may not be enough. Where one buys the card can be just as important, with retailers having solid, reliable, reputations often superior to sources offering bargain prices.

I personally use the Panasonic cards with my Pentax K10D, in either the 1GB or 2GB Class 6 Pro High Speed versions, mainly because of decent prices, past success with this brand, and fewer counterfeits seem to exist. However, either of the other two brands would likely be just as good with reasonable steps taken to avoid fakes.

stewart

[Martin]

I bought a SanDisk Ultra II 2GB a couple of days ago. No error have occured this far, but I have to try it more before I can say everything is ok .

Martin

[SpecialK]

Doesn't relate directly to your situation, but I used the original 32mb card that came with my Canon S3IS in a Canon A630 for some shots at work. Had the graphics artist guy download them off the card (I have no facilites at work) and I got them off his folder network.

Neither Windows Photo/Fax viewer nor Photoshop would open the images. I took them home to my couple years old computer and they opened fine with Ember photo editor I have been using for years. It worked like a charm. This this happened two times. I downgraded to another 16 MB card which worked fine.

Hit the old card with a hammer and threw it away...

Memory is so cheap these days, it hardly pays to buy off E bay.

[chen]

I have the same problem with my K10D of error msg "CAMERA CANNOT DISPLAY THIS IMAGE" when I switched to a Kingston 1GB elite pro card. Originally I was using the normal Kingston 1GB card and never have the error msg.
The first 4 shots with the elite pro card was ok, then started to have the error msg after that. Tired to format the card on the PC and also on the camera, but still have the same problem. Able to view those pictures with the photo browser, but the images show streaks of short white lines across the whole image.
Tried that elite pro card on my HP camera, and also the same problem.
When I used back the normal Kingston card on my K10D, there was no porblem. Hence I concluded that the elite pro card is faulty. Unfortunately I can't return the card to the shop or send to Kingston for warranty because I bought the card a few months back & have misplaced the purchase receipt.

[Duck Dodgers]

I'm going to format the card in the camera and see if that makes a difference.

Always your best bet. It's the first thing I do with a new card, even if the camera seems to recognize it.

Secondly, always buy the best card you can afford (from a reputable dealer). I'm preparing to head to Virgin Islands next month, and I'm waiting until the last second to buy more memory (since prices only come down). But I'll buy less capacity rather than buy cheaper cards. I'll shoot jpeg, if I have to.

[Duck Dodgers]

Unfortunately I can't return the card to the shop or send to Kingston for warranty because I bought the card a few months back & have misplaced the purchase receipt.

Try contacting them, anyway. There should be a batch number on the card, and they may already be aware of problems with that batch. Can't hurt to check.

[marcdsgn]

Well, I'm pleased to report that my image-reading problem seems to have abated since purchasing a Sandisk Extreme III SD card.

As for the suspect cards, I returned them to the reseller who has refunded not only the amount originally paid, but also the cost of return post. So I can't complain.

Still not convinced one way or the other whether the cards were bogus, and I've since considered that the problem may simply have been that the normal-speed Sandisk cards are just too slow for the K10D.

So from now on its Extreme IIIs for me.

[ZigDaPig]

I've had memory cards from Apacer, Transcend and Sandisk.

The Apacer and Transcend have NEVER failed me yet,
while the only Sandisk I bought (Extreme III) failed only
after a couple of weeks. It started with a few "gray" pictures (just a few pixels visible, the rest of the picture completely 50% gray), and all of a sudden I couldn't read any pictures anymore.
Then I tried recovery software to recover the pictures, but this had different results each time I ran it. Finally, after trying for an hour, I decided to give up the soft approach, and just slammed the card onto my desk (hoping that inside there was a loose connection or something, and hoping to fix this by applying some mechanical stress). I then tried it again, and... bingo... my PC was again able to read the full card ! So I was able to recover my pics...
So it was definitely a bad contact or connection within the card. The day after I took the card back to the shop and traded it for a Apacer. I will NEVER buy a SanDisk again !

People can argue that it was "just bad luck, to have a faulty card", but I don't buy that !
The reason I bought the Extreme III (despite of it's higher price) was that Sandisk claims it is a much "tougher" card (can withstand higher mechanical stress, lower/higher temperatures)...
If this "tough" card then already fails after a couple of weeks because of a bad solder or something like that, I have serious doubts regarding the Sandisk quality control.
"SanDisk Extreme III SD memory cards, one of the fastest, most rugged and most durable memory cards on the market."
At least Apacer doesn't make this kind of statements, and their 150x cards are definitely as fast, and to my experience even more "rugged and durable".

If you pay extra, you should get something extra, and this is definitely not the case with Sandisk, that's why I will boycot them from now on. :-)

Z.