5D Mk III Killed 2 CF cards while shooting video

[Chris Adams]

Hey guys,

I bought a mk III used about 4 months ago. I've had great results with it so far...except for this:

One month ago I was on a shoot and shot two 10 minute takes. 1.1.3 firmware, no errors, didn't look at playback, but assumed everything was normal. The DIT pulled the card, tried to download the footage, and found nothing. The card wouldn't even show up on the computer.

It was a transcend 30mbs card so we assumed faulty card.

I've done about 10 shoots with the same camera since then and they all went perfectly.

Then tonight, shooting on the same camera, 1.2.1 firmware, and a Sandisk Extreme Pro 90mbs card. I shoot two 10 minute takes. Start to shoot a third and get an error message something along the lines of "Cannot connect to cf card or storage device. Power Down". I've never seen anything like that. The DIT immediately pulled the card. Same thing, the computer will not even recognize the card.

After trying numerous things, we got the card to show up, but couldn't see anything on the card, could not open it, and could not tell how much data was on the card.

So this leads me to believe it is a camera issue and not a card issue. I am at a total loss for what could be causing this.

I'm shooting with it for the next two days straight so any ideas would be much appreciated!!

Thanks!!

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Its possibly a bad connection internally in the camera, it really does not matter what is causing it, it needs to be fixed. Send it to Canon along with your story. Contact the card manufacturer about repairing / replacing the cards.

 

[agierke]

i just had a conversation with the owner of the Apple repair shop in my area about storage drives, specifically SSD and Flash storage. it was mostly about the benefits of moving to SSD or Fusion drives for my Desktop but right at the end i asked about CF cards being flash storage.

as he explained it to me, the drawbacks of flash storage is at a certain point they cant be written over and they fail. i forget how many cycles he said but he did specifically say that it is a much bigger concern for video than for still photography because of the shear amount of data that is used in a shorter period of time. smaller cards and older cards can cause some failure issues for video. he said when they fail they fail suddenly and without symptoms and often the data is irretrievable. or at least that is how my paranoid driven mind heard it.

now, i do not shoot video and only concern myself with still needs nor do i profess to be very knowledgeable about all the vagaries of electronics/computing but i would not entirely assume there isn't an issue with your card usage.

i would, if i were you, invest in high end cards that are more than big enough to handle video needs and rotate cards out after a certain amount of usage. i would also eliminate variables in my cards...keep the same brand, same size, and same speed cards.

i'm not suggesting that it might not be the camera but i certainly wouldn't rule out a card issue at this point. eliminating variables will help discover what the problem is. maybe send the cards into canon as well just to get their thoughts as well as google the issues concerning the brand, size, and speed of the cards used. you may also take the cards to a computer repair shop in your area and see if they can test the cards to see what the failure may have been.

 

[RGF]

as he explained it to me, the drawbacks of flash storage is at a certain point they cant be written over and they fail. i forget how many cycles he said but he did specifically say that it is a much bigger concern for video than for still photography because of the shear amount of data that is used in a shorter period of time

I have that the lifetime of flash memory is often measured in 000s of writes (reads are free) - from a google search