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I normally download my files to the pc with a card reader and then cull the bad shots in CS3. I always format the card in camera after I have finished the downloading. I sometimes feel tempted to delete some bad files in camera when I realise the card is nearly full, is it the wrong thing to do?
Monique

There is nothing wrong with that. If it weren't OK to do, the option to delete them wouldn't be there

Some people advocate never deleting a file off of the card but I'm not one of those and do it all the time.

Thanks EJ for confirming what I suspected.
I had actually been reprimanded when I mentioned that I sometimes deleted files when I realised that the shots I had just fired were no good. This photographer friend said that you could ruin your card deleting like that, though I had never had a problem with any of my cards.
Monique

Ruining the card? that's crazy - there is nothing about deletion that could physically hurt the card. The risk is that if there is some sort of power loss while the card is being deleted that the File Allocation Table on the card could get messed up but the way the cameras are designed now is that even after the camera shuts down due to insufficient power in the battery, there is still enough power to finish any card operations. So the only real risk is some sort of electronic power problem in the camera during deletion or popping open the flash card door during deletion. The first would still allow you to get the pictures back via a data rescue program and the second is almost impossible because deletion occurs in a few milliseconds and even then the files are still recoverable.

I delete most of my files in camera.....any that make it past that point get deleted on the computer

John Labrenz wrote:I delete most of my files in camera.....any that make it past that point get deleted on the computer

ROFLMAO

I do if I have the time and sure it is not a keeper, There is nothing worse than chimping your shots and missing an opportunity though

I find I am more likely to delete in the field than once it is on my computer which just ends up wasting hard drive space.

Gene

I'll add my hat to the ring: I also delete in-camera all the time.

I'll throw my two cents in, I never delete in-camera anymore after two incidents a few years ago. Lost everything on a card (two different cards) twice after deleting in-camera and to date they remain the only times I've ever had a card failure, so I just don't do it now.

Older cameras and cards with long write and erase times would have been higher risk. There is very little risk of that today with modern cameras/cards and no more risk that doing it on a PC

E.J. my latest card disaster from deleting in-camera was with a Canon 1D Mk III and the fastest 8 GB card at the time, so they weren't exactly older cameras and cards...that happened just over 20 months ago. And there is certainly far more risk deleting off of a camera than a PC in general, as there should be back-ups on a PC (should be the first thing everyone does when they download to their PC). Once it's gone off a camera, it's gone, whereas even on a PC with no back-ups, you can still go get it out of the Recycle Bin (technically, the risk associated with a card crash/drive crash from deleting a file is probably the same, though).

john660 wrote: Once it's gone off a camera, it's gone, whereas even on a PC with no back-ups, you can still go get it out of the Recycle Bin (technically, the risk associated with a card crash/drive crash from deleting a file is probably the same, though).

Anything you delete on a camera is easily recoverable with recovery software and in general the space that deleted photos take up is not overwritten until there is no more unused room at which point the blocks that are loaded with deleted photos are overwritten. Remember that deleting and even formatting a card does not delete the image data, it simply erases the pointer to where that data resides in the File Allocation Table. There is nothing inherently dangerous about deleting with the camera and 99% of the time that there is a problem there was some sort of user error involved as I've outlined earlier in this thread (you could certainly be part of the 1% but if it happened twice... ). You were unfortunate though.

The most common user error would be a buffer that had data in it and the camera's flash card door is opened and the card ejected prior to the buffer clearing.

All that aside, the question was actually about damaging the card which deleting images in camera simply can not do. The data can be damaged in any of a number of ways in or out of the camera, but the simple act of deleting, can not damage the card itself.

Good points, E.J. I stand corrected!

E.J. :

Can you give us some explanation where and how image files become corrupted??

Can it happen from not properly removing a card after uploading to the computer?

Because I have ended up with corrupted files I will not delete in camera. Not that a deletion caused the corrupted files I had.

The most common way to corrupt the data on a card is through power interuption while the card is being written to. This can occur in a number of ways including, removing the battery before the buffer is cleared, opening the flash card door before the buffer is cleared (although most cameras will resume writting when the door is closed as long as the card has not been ejected), ejecting a card before the buffer is cleared, power failure in the camera whil images are writing to the card. Additionaly whenthe card is plugged into a computer either through a card reader or through the camera, if the card is just pulled or the USB cable is pulled, or anything that removes the card's connection from the computer without first ejecting the card can corrupt the card. This holds true for PC and Mac.

Other ways of course can be a bad card, a card with bad data blocks that haven't been mapped out through a format that are then written to, a flaky connection from card to camera, etc.

Thank you very much for a very thorough explanation of what can cause corrupted data.

Worth remembering and practicing avoidance of.