Photographs jumping Cameras?!?

[JoannaKS]

Hi, all.

I posted before about missing photographs taken on my Canon SX60. (Hi, John!) The good news is that I found my photographs! (Yay!) The bad news is that they were in my SISTER'S camera card, which was in HER Canon SX60.  She discovered them while she was going through her own camera card, looking for something. (For the record: No, we did not switch cameras; No, we did not switch camera cards.) However, she's missing a couple hundred flamingo pictures that she took. Where are they? Yep, near as we can figure they're on my card. I took a bunch of photos, but when I was going through, I had a ton. They didn't seem that expansive. You get in the zone, you know?

So here's my question... is there any way to stop this from happening? I like having MY photos and she likes having HERS. I looked it up online and there are a bunch of steps (that we didn't do) to send pictures from one camera to another. Did I mention we didn't do an of the steps? That's what confuses us both. I think we were 5-10 feet away from each other at some points, others we were almost on top of each other. To make it even worse, neither of us even enabled the wifi settings. To us, wifi is completely superfluous.

Is the SX60 like a garage door opener or car remote? I remember that there was trouble that some were on the same frequency, so if you open your garage door, the neighbors might open. Or someone unlocks their car in a parking lot and it accidentally unlocks yours... all because both are on the same remote frequency.

Has anyone had that happen with twin cameras? We did get them at the same store, a few months apart. It seems feasible they might be in the same construction batch.

Joanna

[jrhoffman75]

Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor and in Latin lex parsimoniae, which means 'law of parsimony') is a problem-solving principle attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian.

The principle can be interpreted as

Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

1. WiFi pairing will not randomly happen (and even if it did),

2. Photos shared between devices do not leave the sharing device. Canon's own instructions discuss multiple sharing.

Cameras and/or cards must have changed hands.

[RobertTheFat]

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@jrhoffman75 wrote:

Occam's razor (also written as Ockham's razor and in Latin lex parsimoniae, which means 'law of parsimony') is a problem-solving principle attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian.

The principle can be interpreted as

Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

1. WiFi pairing will not randomly happen (and even if it did),

2. Photos shared between devices do not leave the sharing device. Canon's own instructions discuss multiple sharing.

Cameras and/or cards must have changed hands.

---

Every Canon camera that I've seen in at least the last ten years records, in its Exif data, the serial number of the camera on which the image was taken. So it should be easy enough to find out which camera took which pictures. Any decent photo editor will let you see the Exif data (although it may not call it that).

FWIW, my guess is that if anything got swapped, it was the cameras, since that's an easier mistake to make than swapping the cards.

One further note: I'm told that some cell phones can exchange some forms of data by being brought into close proximity with each other. (I'm not sure what protocol is used, but it's more likely Bluetooth than wifi.) I've never heard of a camera with such a capability, but I suppose it's possible.

[John_]

Hi Joanna..Maybe an exorcism I think your cameras might be posessed!!  lol

Robert made a great suggestion to look at the EXIF data recorded in the photo data to see the cameras serial number.

I do not think the photos can transfer by themselves without manually sending them

John

[JoannaKS]

Thanks Bob and John, Your replies were infinitely more helpful (and not as snide or degrading as) the Occams Razor one. I'll deifnitely look into the EXIF data record.

Unfortunately, I have a call in to Canon. As I said, we didn't swap cameras. The only time we ever do that is if one of us needs the restroom (we didn't) or I need to carry my sister's for safety because we're going over rough terrain and she's in a wheelchair. (We didn't.) Hopefully Canon can resolve this. If not, looks like we're looking at tons of EXIF data every single time we go out together to take pictures - which is at least once every other week!

I'm almost wondering if it is because hers was sold with the same serial number as mine (they couldn't find the box or extras, so sold it for half price under my serial number.) I can't see it, but this is the first time I've encountered that problem before!

Joanna

[jrhoffman75]

Hi Joanna. I apologize; I sometimes forgot that not everyone can take a joke like I can.

That aside, all three of us have said that we really can't see how photos jump from camera to camera.

The serial number is built into the camera at the factory by Canon. You can see it on the bottom of the camera in the Canon label.

The sales person can write anything he wants on the sales slip but it doesn't change the camera info.

You can try a simple test: turn both cameras on, place them side by side on a counter and take some photos with the left side camera. View the photos on that camera and then check what's on the right side camera. Then repeat using right side camera. Set that camera to black and white to make the photos different.

What do you see?

[jrhoffman75]

One additional thought.

How are you downloading your photos. Are they perhaps getting all placed in the same folders?