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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
A miracle
Harvey Levine, Photographer
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Harrisburg | PA | | Posted: 12:50 PM on 05.06.10 |
->> Yesterday, I did something incredibly stupid. After shooting a job and downloading it to my computer, I put my San Disk Extreme Pro 16 gb 90mb/s card as well as my San Disk 8gb extreme IV 45mb/s cards in my pants pocket. I intended to put them in my card wallet. Well, I forgot and put the pants in the wash. I discovered this when I went to
empty the washer and found my card at the bottom. I assumed the cards were toast. My cell phone alway died with 2 drops of water. Just for the heck of it, I decided to try out the cards. First, I re-downloaded what was on the cards just to see if they were readable. They were. They worked like a charm when I shot a job today. I can't believe they didn't short out or otherwise got destroyed. To quote Al Michaels, "Do you believe in miracles. Yes!" |
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Jacob Langston, Photographer
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Orlando | FL | | Posted: 1:07 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> I have washed and dried mine many times by accident and they work fine. My own way of reformatting. |
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Dave Breen, Photographer
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Somerset | PA | USA | Posted: 1:16 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> I once spilled (unsweetened) iced tea INTO (not just onto) an old Sunpak strobe once. I let everything dry out, and it worked fine. I think companies make cell phones hyper-sensitive to sell more phones. |
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Ernie Rice, Photographer
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Paragould | AR | USA | Posted: 1:18 PM on 05.06.10 |
->> CF cards are sealed solid state memory blocks with wires going into it, the other end of the wires are the holes that plug into the device. There aren't any "electronics" in a CF card to get water damaged. I've washed several cards and they still work just fine. :) The heat from the drier is probably more of a threat to them than the water.
An SD card on the other hand is a memory blog attached to a circuit board that has electronics. SD cards will get killed by the wash. |
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Brian Blanco, Photographer
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Tampa / Sarasota | FL | USA | Posted: 1:21 PM on 05.06.10 |
->> Harvey, I put mine through the wash all the time... only once intentionally. If everything in my business was as reliable as SanDisk cards I'd be a happy camper... with a lot less overhead.
The time I put it through the wash intentionally was the day a security guard at an MLB spring training facility handed me a VERY sun-faded CF card he found under a 1/2" of dirt, gravel and broken shells in the dirt patch they call the media parking lot. The CF card had no name on it so in an effort to find the card's owner I tried to open the images on it. Well, the little holes were completely jam packed with dirt and gravel. I couldn't knock the crud out so that night I tosses it in the wash with a load of clothes and it came out ready to use.
The images left no clue as to the original owner but the flies on the card (remember it was sun-faded and appeared to have been run over several times as it was also oddly compressed) were useable and had been shot over two years earlier. |
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Butch Miller, Photographer
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Lock Haven | PA | USA | Posted: 2:30 PM on 05.06.10 |
->> The cards I have "washed" seem to prefer Tide detergent and Downy fabric softener ... ;-)
Yes, CF cards can be surprisingly resilient .... |
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G.J. McCarthy, Photographer
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Dallas | TX | US | Posted: 2:35 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> You know what really sucks? When you wash and dry your company-issued 400. I mean, man -- there's just no way to explain that to your boss. |
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Rick Yeatts, Photographer
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Dallas | TX | USA | Posted: 2:50 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> I washed a 1 gig ipod and it worked fine as well. |
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Monty Rand, Photographer
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Bangor | ME | USA | Posted: 2:56 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> Ditto on the ipod........only it took 6 months before it worked again which was odd. Everytime I tried it nothing, then one day it showed signs of life. Very odd. |
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Max Waugh, Photographer
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Bothell | WA | USA | Posted: 3:02 PM on 05.06.10 |
->> You guys are lucky. I waded through a river in Costa Rica and forgot my cards were in a holder in my pants pocket. They got damp (not fully soaked) and 3-4 of them never worked properly again.
Hopefully all these success stories don't prompt anyone to go out and try washing their gear on purpose. ;) |
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N. Scott Trimble, Photographer
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Lake Oswego | OR | USA | Posted: 3:11 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> I put one in a cup of water and froze it. Then thawed it in the microwave. Still worked. Course, I did it as a torture test article about what cards were more resilient! |
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Bradley Leeb, Photographer
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Champaign | IL | USA | Posted: 3:22 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> If you do ever get a cell phone wet, put it in a sealed ziploc bag with some rice for a couple of days. I've seen it do the trick twice. |
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Eileen Blass, Photographer
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xxxxx | xx | USA | Posted: 8:33 PM on 05.06.10 |
->> I have a hand held light meter that I treasure. I've had my Minolta III since about 1980, still use it. In fact, I used it yesterday during some studio lighting tests. I bet half the folks on this message board have never held one. Just jokin' folks.
Anyway, about 10 years ago I was up in Allentown, PA covering a night football game in a deluge of a rainstorm. My meter (aka Minnie) somehow fell out of my bag and spent the night drowning on the sidelines of that football field until I got a call the next day from someone in the sports department of the school who found her. I knew Minnie would be toast, but I drove all the way up to Allentown again to retrieve her. Well, she dried out, she still works, and to this day is the most trusty piece of equipment I've ever owned. Always in my bag. By the way, always put your name and your phone number on your gear. |
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Randy Sartin, Photographer
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Knoxville | TN | USA | Posted: 8:46 PM on 05.06.10 |
->> You're not supposed to wash CF cards? How else should they be cleaned? :)
I freaked out the first time I did it, and that was with a pretty cheap card...2 years later it's still doing fine. |
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Danny Munson, Photographer
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San Dimas | Ca | United States | Posted: 8:59 PM on 05.06.10 |
| ->> I've washed the CF cards and the Ipod. No problems. My wife hates the hundreds of business cards I have sent through the washer though. |
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Steven E. Frischling, Photographer
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| | | Posted: 9:35 PM on 05.07.10 |
->> Eileen
Ahkh the Minolta III, ranks up there with the Nikon F3 as a work horse ... I had a Minolta IV and some other random light and flash meters. Now ... I happily have none in my kit.
As for washing CF cards, been there done it, never had a problem. Wade through river, fell in toilet, snow bank, washer dryer ... a few mishaps since I started to use CF cards in 1999 ... never a problem
Oh yea, for fun electronics moments, go find a Vivitar 283. Let it power up ... remove the batteries ... wait a few seconds and pop it off near some unsuspecting victim who watched you take out the batteries. You can get a few flashes out of that flash after you've removed the batteries :0) |
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