trouble transferring photos from canon 5d m3 internal memory to Mac

[justinbrown1973]

Hi All,

I only use my camera occasionally, and have not had this problem before. I have always been able to save my photos onto the sd card, until the last time I used the camera. I have checked the photos on my sd card, and have used an apple sd card reader for my card, and have contacted apple support who guided me through the attempted problem solving, which informed me that the latest batch of photos were not saved to the sd card, only to the camera. 

The double is is that when I connect the camera to my Mac, the photos do not register on the software. It is only if I disconnect the usb cable from the camera, that I can see the photos on my camera. I have tried to transfer/copy from the internal memory to the sd card, and this does not work. 

I have installed the Eos utility onto my Mac, but when I press the play button on my canon, the reading light flashes for several seconds, without showing the images on the camera screen. I can only see the images on my camera if I disconnect the cable, but then cannot transfer onto my Mac. 

There seems to be a software compatibility issue between my canon and my Mac, but apple support have checked my computer and report that it is working fine. Does anyone have any ideas, as this is very frustrating. Any help will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Justin.

[AtticusLake]

Your camera has a CF slot and an SD slot.  Both cards can record photos.  Of these, the SD is the "consumer" card, which is generally slower; CF is more "pro", and can be faster.  Usually you would choose the CF slot (with a fast card) for best performance, e.g. burst shooting.

Your camera lets you choose which slot to record to, if you have both cards inserted. Refer to the "EOS 5D Mark III - Instruction Manual", page 118 on, section "Selecting the Card for Recording and Playback" under "Image Settings", for instructions.  If you don't have that manual, you can download it from the support site; e.g. https://www.canon.co.uk/support/consumer/products/cameras/eos/eos-5d-mark-iii.html?type=manuals

So it could be that you've accidentally selected the CF card, and all your photos are there.

[justinbrown1973]

Hi AtticusLake,

Thank you for your reply, I will read that section now. I have also just ordered a cf read reader. 

[AtticusLake]

Excellent, I hope thast works for you.

In the meantime, though, you should be able to tell if your images are on the CF card.  In playback mode, when you select a picture, there's a little icon on the screen that tells you waht card it's on.  See the manual page 252, in the very top-right corner.  So you can at least see if this is the problem.

[p4pictures]

One additional bit of information. On your camera, there are four settings to determine how the camera works with multiple cards. The default option; Standard writes to the primary card in the camera until it is full, then displays a message asking if you want to switch to the other card. The primary card will change if you remove a card and close the camera memory card door. It doesn't automatically switch back when the removed card is replaced.

So if you were capturing images and saving to the SD card, then remove the card, close the memory card door the camera switches over to the CF card automatically. When you reinsert the SD card, the camera keeps the CF card as the primary card and writes new images to it. 

One method to ensure the SD card is the primary card is to remove the SD card with images, and the CF card. Then reinsert the SD card and close the camera memory card cover. This makes the SD card the primary card, you can now open the card cover and insert the CF card, it will be the secondary card. Close the camera card slot cover and the SD will still be the primary card. 

[justinbrown1973]

Thanks Brian, that's interesting, and likely to be the reason why this has happened. I'm still waiting for my cf card reader to arrive.. should be today.

[p4pictures · Accepted solution]

If you have both cards in the camera and the CF card is the primary card, then you can use the Image copy function in the Play menus to copy images from the primary card to the secondary.