H4D-50 and Kingston 32Gb CF

[hlop]

Hi All,

Upgraded to H4D-50 today and came across the problem I've expected least. For some strange reason, it doesn't recognise Kingston 32Gb 266X CF cards. The cards were working perfectly with Leaf Aptus 65 and H3DII-31. While I was in the vendor's office, we also tried this card with H3DII-39 - works well, no problem. My iMac still can read the card and format it. So it seems to work with anything but my new H4D-50! 

Tried SanDisk 8Gb 400X - works. Found somewhere deep in drawers ancient SanDisk Ultra II 1Gb - works! But when I put Kingston in there is an error message on the back screen: "Error Media (9008). Restart the camera"

Anyone ever experienced such a problem?

[Douglas Fairbank @ Classic V]

If you have written it in this forum it should be noticed at the factory, no guarantees, just experience. I have not heard of this before so could I suggest that you try reformatting it on your computer from within Disk Utility to MS DOS (FAT) and try again.

[hlop]

Thanks Douglas

I've reformatted it in the other camera and on my Mac, upgraded back and body firmware - nothing helps. Hope, factory will notice the problem

[mauro risch]

I have tried Kingston CF cards before with the H2 and the H3. It didn't work with either one.
I keep them to the canon.
With the H4D-50 now, I only use SAndisk and Lexar CF cards, from 8GB to 32GB. All working well.

[Giorgio]

If you have written it in this forum it should be noticed at the factory, no guarantees, just experience. I have not heard of this before so could I suggest that you try reformatting it on your computer from within Disk Utility to MS DOS (FAT) and try again.

FYI

I have both Lexar and A Data cards for my H4D 40, the Lexar cards never show any problems but after using the A Data cards without incident for over a year one 32GB 533x card did have the problem you are reporting. After formatting the card in my Mac the problem disappeared.  I had to use rescue software to get the images though as my Mac also refused to see the card.

I think there may be a lesson here...

[hlop]

Thanks for the replies guys!

It's all a bit of surprise. Working in IT industry, I dealt a lot with different types of Kingston memory, including using Kingston RAM in IMacs and Mac-books. Never had an issue.

I've ordered a couple of Sandisk CF cards but it's a shame to lose 2 other absolutely working cards only because of some silly compatibility issue. I bet it could be cured by firmware update and hope that Hasselblad will read this tread eventually

[hlop]

Brief update.

After discussing a problem between me, Shriro (still local dealer for Hassy) and Hasselblad, we are going to send one of my Kingston 32Gb cards to Hasselblad for tests and possible firmware patch. I'll keep you informed

[wyo22ski]

Any new information on this particular problem?  I ran into something very similar today and am quite worried. 

I have a Kingston 32gb 266x that I rotate daily with a Transcend 32gb card.  I've been traveling for a month, and this combination has performed flawless until today (go figure, my last day in Prague) when my digital back CF39 on Cambo WDS (x-synch) beeped and alerted me with "Error Media 9013 (Restart Camera)" message.  The 9013 code is a new one for me.  I've seen other but can't remember their numbers.  As usual, no buttons work on the digital back, so the only remedy is to remove the battery, reinsert, and turn the back on.  Doing so gives the same beep, and same message.  Luckily I had the Transcend on hand and continued shooting. 

Arriving at the hotel, I plugged the suspect Kingston card into the card reader and it did not show up (mount) on the desktop, but did show up in Phocus.  Clicking on the disk icon in Phocus usually shows a subfolder with images.  Not the case this time.  I tried another card reader and still no go.  The Transcend card worked fine, as it always has.

The next step would be to connect the digital back directly to the computer with FW800.  I didn't bring that cable, so I will have to wait until my return to the States on Wednesday. 

Worse case scenario would be to possibly reformat in my Canon and attempt a data recovery--if I can get the card to at least mount in the Canon.

Other than the worse case scenario, have I sleuthed everything well enough?  I assume an email to Kingston and Hasselblad will go unanswered.  I would hate to lose six hours of morning photographs.

Thanks
Cameron

[mauro risch]

I started to use the 32GB recently on the Canon, specially for video.
With the H4D-50, I still use the 16GB cards from sandisk.
I am always trying to avoid this kind of things.
It is very frustrating to have done a beautiful job and to see no results on your system afterwards.
The 4GBs are to small, but the 8s and 16s can handle a good amount of shots still.
10 yrs ago I had a Lexar 1GB fail on a Canon.
The recovery software worked for 50% of the images.
I read about compatibility problems with the KIngston cards, but it was a long time ago.
Probably all brands now have problems like this.
Nikons now shoot to 2 cards.

[hlop]

Any new information on this particular problem?  I ran into something very similar today and am quite worried. 

Unfortunately, at this point, no good news. Hasselblad states that Kingston Ultimate 266x are compatible with all H platforms and trying to blame my 2 cards. But I don't believe them because the cards are working in my old H3DII-31 (which dealer still have after upgrade) and dealer's H3DII-39. They also work with all card readers om my iMac and were working well with Leaf Aptus 65. They don't work only with my current H4D-50, so, is it cards' or camera's fault?

Also all communication goes through the dealer, which slows everything down badly

[Drchevalier]

Friends,

Not to belabour what you folks have seen, but not all memory card memory is created equally.  I have had inconsistent performance with Transcend cards in the H4D-40 and no issues with either the 400x Lexar or Sandisk or the 600x Lexar.  I am hoping to see CF cards from Hoodman in Canada again.  They are bloody expensive but are the only cards that use SSD grade memory inside.  As much as I hate to say that paying a premium gets you a better product, we did all choose Hasselblad.

The memory structures vary with different vendors, who often source the memory from a variety of providers.  There was a time where the big Sandisk SD cards would not be seen at all in the Leica M9 but worked just fine in other cameras.  Leica did a firmware update to address this.  I am not an engineer, but I would expect the folks at Hasselblad to do some pretty strict pre-use validation of cards when you power up the camera and force an error if one of these tests fails, the premise being that in this way you will not capture a lot of images and have the card fail.  It doesn't always work this way unfortunately.

I did speak with one of the primary engineers at Hoodman, and was given the advice that because the memory on cards is used pretty much sequentially (unlike a spinning drive), they can actually get "worn out"  It has been suggested that rather than deleting images, reformatting the card after moving images off, may change subtly the allocation tables and give you a higher probability of success.  We have all seen "dead" cards that have been brought back to life with a low level format, although I question the logic of using a zombie card for anything important.

I have also learned through research that very often, the super fast cards from some of the vendors really aren't capable of being used at high speed continuously.  A point and shoot dumping a 6mb jpeg works the card much less hard than an H4D-50 writing a 3FR.

If a memory engineer finds any of my statements inaccurate, I welcome the correction.

Ross

[PeterDorr]

Maybe too obvious, but have you perhaps used your cards in another camera as well?
I have had 2 faulty cards in the time span of nearly 3 weeks and after thorough analyses of the problems it appeared that once my HB used cards had been used and formatted in my Canon camera they failed later on on th HB.

so no exchange of cards anymore between diff cameras is what helped me...