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Can I tell which memory card was used to record an image on my 5D III?

WesternGuy
Enthusiast

I have a 5D III that has been converted to capture infrared images with a 590nm filter.  I want to know if it is possible to tell which memory card was used to capture the image, the CF card or the SD card.  The reason I am asking is that some of my images are showing very fine vertical "lines/stripes" in the images and others are not.  These images were all taken with the same camera 5DIII and the same lens 24-105L IS. 

 

I am trying to determine if the "cause" is a sensor problem or a problem with some of the meory cards that I have.  I can  post examples, if required and if someone will tell me what the process is for posting images.

 

Any insight that anyone would care to share will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

 

WesternGuy

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Waddizzle, thanks for the idea!  Duh, why didn't I think of that, but I guess this is what happens when you are too close to the problem.

 

This may not give me information on past shoots, but it is an experiment that I can use to attempt to isolate the culprit, if indeed it is the memory cards that are causing the problem.  It may even isolate THE card, so I will shoot a series of images with the CF card out and simply repeat with the SD cards.  Thanks again.

 

To those of you who noted what Canon does or does not do, all I can say in my years of shooting both film and digital is that Canon does whatever it wants and whether or not it has any bearing on what users want seems to be irrelevant.  I too would like to have the data telling me which card was used to capture a particular set of images.  The CF cards would appear to have serial numbers on them - don't know about the SD cards, but I am going to assume they have some form of identification on them.  Why digital cameras can't read this information and report it as part of the EXIF data, I don't know.

 

WesternGuy

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15 REPLIES 15

jrhoffman75
Legend
Legend

I'm confused. Can't you put each card in a card reader and see which one contains the images?

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

Yes, but this situation is "after the fact" so to speak. The images have been processed and the "knowledge" of which memory card they may have been made with is long gone.

WesternGuy

If you downloaded and reformatted cards I don't know of any way (unless you haven't recorded new images - then you could try file recovery software.

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic

John, thanks for the reply.  It supports what I thought.  I was hoping in Lightroom in the Library module under the Metadata section that there might be somehting that would tell me if an image was recorded on the CF card or the SD card in the camera.

 

I am trying to establish the origin of the "striping" I mentioned in my original post.  Most of the time on the converted 5D III, I try and ensure that it is recording to the CF card, but every once in a while, things get mixed up and I end up recording on the SD card.  I have gone through my IR images for the past year or so and some show the "striping" and some don't.  It would be nice to know which type of card the image was recorded on when the image was captured, so I can see if it is the type of card that is making the difference.  If I can't, then I will have to find some other way to resolve this.

 

WesternGuy

Remove the SD card, and it will always use the CF card.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."


@Waddizzle wrote:

Remove the SD card, and it will always use the CF card.


Even if the camera is off when you remove the card! And even if you put the SD card back in before turning the camera back on!! (And BTW it works the same way in the other direction, i.e. if it's the CF card that you remove.) I've complained about that behavior several times to no avail. Canon apparently thinks it makes sense for it to work that way, and I think they're nuts.

Bob
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA

OP is looking to get info on past shoots. 

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic


@jrhoffman75 wrote:

OP is looking to get info on past shoots. 


I understand.  I think you've already called it correctly.  There's no way to tell.  Removing the SD card should help isolate whether or not the noise issues are card related, though.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."


@jrhoffman75 wrote:

OP is looking to get info on past shoots. 


The (admittedly subsidiary) point is that the way the camera shuffles its card slots offers no help in doing that.

 

But to your point: Even though getting useful info on past shoots may be futile, it shouldn't matter much. Either the striping problem was a one-time fluke, in which case it can be ignored, or it wasn't, in which case it should be possible to test whether its ocurrence is related to which card slot is in use. Even though the camera doesn't record that datum in the Exif data (although one supposes that it could), it's not particularly hard to keep track of it manually.

Bob
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
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