Transferring photos

Ranchgirl

Hello, I am thankful to be a newcomer on this sight and be able to talk to others about their Nikon's. I have recently been having problems with my SD card, or so I think. I consider myself a beginner even though I have taken pictures for years. I have a SanDisk Extreme Plus SDHC 80 32GB memory card. I got it for Christmas and I was pretty sure that I formatted it before using it. Nonetheless, I know I have transferred photos from it to my computer. Now I can't get my computer to grab them and put them in my iPhoto. My computer pulls them up on a screen and shows me all the photos on my card, but when I click the button to import, it begins the process but never finishes. And it actually distorts the photos it does pick up. I took my card to Walgreens to try to print some off that card and the gal told me that the photos are there, but the machine just can't read them. She says it's a setting on my camera that I need to find to allow my camera to transfer from itself to the card? My camera came with a book but after spending all that money on my camera kit, do you think I can find the answer in there? Ugh. I would appreciate anyone's input. Thank you.

bruto

If your computer is able to view the photos, then the card is not likely corrupted.

If there's a folder in the computer in which the files can be accessed by Windows Explorer, can you open an individual file in some photo viewing software such as Irfanview, Windows picture viewer, or View NX2? If the files are in NEF format, they need to be converted to JPG before most other programs can read them, and if they're very large, they may need to be downsized as well. View NX2 has a good bulk conversion utility.

For starters, see if you can find out the file format and size of the photos you have transferred.

Ranchgirl

Thanks for the tips. So when I go to view my photos on my camera and I look at the stats on one particular photo, it says it is in RAW format and it is NEF and a size of 6016x4000. I did try to change one photo and I changed it to show JPG, Normal, Large image size.
I'm assuming that is what I might need to do? If that is the case, do I have to do all of them separately, or can I change all 800 photos on my card at one time to JPG format? And should I have it in L, M or S size?

bruto

So the pictures you're taking are in the most information-rich format, the easiest to post process, the easiest to crop, and (to my mind) the best for permanent storage. But most other programs cannot read them, so you must convert them to JPG.

I would advise that if you have the drive space you transfer your NEF images to a folder there first, and then use a batch program to copy all of them (or all that you want) to a specified size and compression of JPG. This will insure that you retain the original copies, which you can edit, improve, or resize again as needed. What size you need may depend on where you're sending the pictures. Some websites limit size more than others. For viewing on a screen, something around 1500 pixels wide is usually plenty and 1000 may be enough. Your best option is to try different sizes and see what you find works.

Although there's rarely a problem, I have had my laptop computer mess up a card when it tried to write files back to it, so I always recommend that you copy the files to the computer first and do all your work on those copies. Don't edit pictures on the card. Keep the card intact until you're sure all has happened as you want. Once you're sure you have the copies you want to save, you can reformat the card.

The View NX2 program does batch conversions. You can select a destination folder, a file size, and a compression amount. You can read the source files either from the memory card, if no editing is needed, or from a folder in the computer. There are also a few naming options. JPG copies from this program generally look good.

Other programs can do batch conversions as well. I've used Irfanview for this with good success. There's a batch conversion option that allows for considerable control, and it operates quite fast. In this or in Faststone, there are choices of what JPG conversion algorithm to use. The slowest is best, and unless you're doing a zillion pictures, it's plenty fast enough, so choose it for the best image quality. For ordinary viewing with no further processing, you can get away with 50 percent compression or more, which will make your files very compact and easy to distribute.