Oh dear, story on this page

http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/Photographer39s-desperation-after-every-wedding.6344471.jp

A PHOTOGRAPHER is offering a reward for the return of a memory card containing a set of precious wedding pictures after her camera was stolen from her Sheffield home.
The woman had taken around 1,500 photographs at a wedding - but before she had time to download them her camera was stolen during a burglary.

The newlyweds who commissioned her in their home town of Hull are so far unaware of the theft, and the photographer is desperate to get the images back before the couple arrive home.

"I am devastated for the couple - I spent all day capturing their special day and had some really good shots for them," she said. "All I want is the memory card. Every bride and groom wants photographs of their day and I just want to be able to give this couple a beautiful album."

Her home was broken into on the Thorpe House Avenue, Meersbrook, when she was out with her children. Nothing else of value except the camera - a Cannon E0S 500 - was stolen.

The bride's mother said: "After years of saving and months of preparation, down to the tiniest detail, we had a wonderful day, with memories we will treasure a lifetime.

"But it looks like we will never get to see those irreplaceable wedding pictures.

"We haven't told our daughter and her new husband the awful news yet, as they are away on honeymoon and we know this would just ruin their whole trip.

"Maybe a compassionate person might come across the camera and hopefully the memory card too, and do the right thing and let us know. We don't want to ask any questions, we just want to get the photos back, so our daughter can have a record of her perfect day."

- To return the card call reporter Claire Lewis at The Star on 0114 276 7676 ext 3424. Anyone with information about the burglary should call police on 0114 220 2020.

:(

ooops. To be fair our wedding photographer had a laptop with him when he did ours. I sat chatting to him for a while and he was uploading pics to his online storage during the wedding. He said it was in case the cards failed or anything went missing. I thought it was a bit extreme but i guess he was right.

I imagine this is something that this photographer will be doing in future. Its the difference between prepared and properly prepared.

Wedding photographer fail.

This is why i only use 2GB and 4GB cards. Everytime I speak to someone who uses a single card for the whole day makes me cringe. One day, the card will fail, and with it all the photos. At least all I can ever lose is 100 or so. Sounds like a lot of photos, but that's about 5% of the photos taken throughout the day.


ooops. To be fair our wedding photographer had a laptop with him when he did ours. I sat chatting to him for a while and he was uploading pics to his online storage during the wedding. He said it was in case the cards failed or anything went missing. I thought it was a bit extreme but i guess he was right.

I imagine this is something that this photographer will be doing in future. Its the difference between prepared and properly prepared.

This is a good idea too. When the bride, groom and guests are eating their meal, I upload any used cards to my laptop too - just means you've got another back-up if anything goes wrong.

Always back up! A lesson to us all.

Yep. I know it's a pain when you get back from a wedding at 11pm and you've been on your feet for 14 hours... But, I always upload immediately to my workstation, and back-up to 3 different hard-drives too. I've never lost a photo yet, and don't plan to!

Some people are just not conscientious enough to be trusted with someone's memories.

I would have assumed a wedding 'tog would shoot at least some shots in RAW - 1,500 is a lot of shots to fit on a card.

Hope she gets it back anyway.

On average, I'll use about 40GB worth of CF cards when I do a wedding. I could just buy a 64GB card and risk losing it all, or I could use the 12 I use now! :)

Surely (all other things being equal) using 12 cards instead of one multiplies your risk of a failed card by 12 times?

... but you'll only lose 1/12th of the data, not an entire wedding

Correct. If one of my cards fail, I lose 100 photos. If I used a solitary card and that failed, I lose 2,000 photos.

Plus cards go walkabouts too.

How often do cards fail?

Risks taken:
a) 12 x miniscule risk = not much risk
b) 1 x miniscule risk = miniscule risk

Cost of taking risk:
If using 12 cards (a) if card fails, loss = 1/12 of pictures
If using 1 card (b) if card fails, loss = 1/1 of pictures

Risk of a single card failing is the same in both cases. Potential cost is much higher if there is only one card.

How often do cards fail?
Not very often. I haven't had a single card fail in 5 years. I haven't lost one either, but I know people who have.

Like Matt I use over 40GB over the day in fact often more. Although I use 8GB cards I run with three cameras for part of the day and two for the rest of it so that in the event that one card was lost I always have the pictures from the other camera/cards.

Whatever the time I put all the pictures on my workstation when I get back. Mirrored HDD's then run a backup on to an external HDD which gets placed in the safe before being stored securely off site.

I personally avoid putting them on a laptop at a wedding as it would be far to easy for the laptop to go walkies or an have accident dropping it screwing the HDD.

You can never backup too much though. Even on my holidays at the moment I'm storing the pictures I take on my laptop and two external HDD's one of which stays with me all the time.

To clarify, I don't re-use/format the cards once I've added them to the laptop. :)

Not very often. I haven't had a single card fail in 5 years. I haven't lost one either, but I know people who have.

I'm guessing Compact Flash... I have never had any fail and even if they do which takes a lot the recovery tools available are very good not forgetting the numerous data recovery companies about.

Solid state memory like the robust CF cards are very hard to damage or irreparably corrupt.

I did once have a Microdrive which did fail though.

after any paid work, i always dump to pc for editing later. I have never lost/had a card fail on me yet. (famous last words)

I always take plenty small calrds 2-8GB for a wedding. If something failed and they took me to court at least then i only have to redo part of the wedding to get the photos.

How often do cards fail?

Too damned often!
I've had 3 Lexars fail and at least two Sandisks [one CF + one SD], all top of their range.
I don't buy them now as I use Hoodman cards who claim a 100% reliability record. Very expensive, but usually cheaper products are cheaper as they lower their tolerances/standards, to get less rejects. Apparently Sandisk/Lexar are consumer grade products, so if you are a Professional photographer, it makes sense to by pro products when necessary.
£210 for a 16G Hoodman card [from US] Vs £69 for a potentially flakey Sandisk 16G card.

For weddings I copy images to two hard drives as I go along and if you keep one with you, less chance of theft losing your work.

I'm guessing Compact Flash... I have never had any fail and even if they do which takes a lot the recovery tools available are very good If you can get computer to recognise card/hard drive!

Solid state memory like the robust CF cards are very hard to damage or irreparably corrupt.
Filling them to capacity can cause issues and is much easier to do so when using small cards in a fast shooting environment like sports/photojournalism or even weddings. I had a card die after something unexpected happened and I had no time to change cards and I suddenly hit capacity mid shoot. So I prefer larger cards as they are safer in that respect, plus changing cards at times can be challenging, so the risk of physical loss of the card is higher than data loss.


A couple of weeks back when shooting in Paris, LR3 beta messed up my file naming and also the capture time which made it very difficult to get images back in order. Annoyingly I'd just backed up my images before realising the time capture issue and had also deleted the shots from card as they were 'safely' on two hard drives. So I did a data recovery on card and got images back from a year earlier when I first bought card and numerous shoots in between! Being a large 16G card means I never fill it [as far as I can recall], so I recovered 840 RAW + JPEG files.

Oh dear, story on this page

http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/Photographer39s-desperation-after-every-wedding.6344471.jp

A PHOTOGRAPHER is offering a reward for the return of a memory card containing a set of precious wedding pictures after her camera was stolen from her Sheffield home.
The woman had taken around 1,500 photographs at a wedding - but before she had time to download them her camera was stolen during a burglary.

The newlyweds who commissioned her in their home town of Hull are so far unaware of the theft, and the photographer is desperate to get the images back before the couple arrive home.

"I am devastated for the couple - I spent all day capturing their special day and had some really good shots for them," she said. "All I want is the memory card. Every bride and groom wants photographs of their day and I just want to be able to give this couple a beautiful album."

Her home was broken into on the Thorpe House Avenue, Meersbrook, when she was out with her children. Nothing else of value except the camera - a Cannon E0S 500 - was stolen.

The bride's mother said: "After years of saving and months of preparation, down to the tiniest detail, we had a wonderful day, with memories we will treasure a lifetime.

"But it looks like we will never get to see those irreplaceable wedding pictures.

"We haven't told our daughter and her new husband the awful news yet, as they are away on honeymoon and we know this would just ruin their whole trip.

"Maybe a compassionate person might come across the camera and hopefully the memory card too, and do the right thing and let us know. We don't want to ask any questions, we just want to get the photos back, so our daughter can have a record of her perfect day."

- To return the card call reporter Claire Lewis at The Star on 0114 276 7676 ext 3424. Anyone with information about the burglary should call police on 0114 220 2020.

:(

Am I just overly suspisious or does anyone else smell a rat here?!
Pressed wrong button, panicked, feared a good sueing might be on it's way, made up robbery story! Only kidding, i'm sure it's as reported.

Regarding cards failing, I've had 2 cards fail, both kingston, both purchased at the same time, so presumably from the same batch. However it was obvious at the time something was amiss(quick panic, change card, keep shooting) and some reasonably cheap/free software retrieved the rest. If the first recovery program doesn't work, try another till you find one that does work.

Also, if a card is going to fail, it will usually do so early on in its life, so never shoot a wedding with new cards.

Furthermore, don't keep your cards with your camera - until a wedding is downloaded they're more valuable than your camera, and don't format your cards until you've got at least 2 separate back-ups, cos someone might steal your computer.

Do photographers have insurance for this kind of thing to do a re-run perhaps (with as many people as possible attending) so there is something to remember?

Professional Indemnity insurance is what you need for when shootings things like weddings which covers the possiblility of not delivering the goods from a one off event, for what ever reason.

But doesn't mean you'll get your photos.

Of course it won't get back your images from wedding, but it may pay for a restaging or for damages to injured party. Better than simply getting nothing. That's the point of insurance.

Good old sheffield star - can't even spell Canon.

Am I just overly suspisious or does anyone else smell a rat here?!
Pressed wrong button, panicked, feared a good sueing might be on it's way, made up robbery story! Only kidding, i'm sure it's as reported.

I thought she might've left her camera lying somewhere....! Joke.
Just hoping that she'll recover the card.