Garbled bottom edges of photos

[dragonmate]

I just bought a Lumix TZ-1 and a 1 gig Teac SD Card. About half of the photos I took had distorted lines at the bottom of the images, after downloading on my PC. (See attached samples.) The distortions do not appear on the thumbnail images.

I remember this happened on my old Olympus D350 just before I lost that camera.

Can someone explain this?

[JimC]

I've seen this kind of thing before. It might not be the camera (chances are, it's not).

Instead, it could be the memory card (or the images arebeing corrupted during the transfer process to the PC).

I'd format the card using the camera's menus (not a PC) as a first step (and I always do this before every use with a memory card). That insures that you always start out with a fresh File Allocation Table (it may have been corrupted already when you were taking the images).

If it reoccurs, I'd try a different memory card in case it's a defective card or compatibilty issue (some cameras are a bit "finnicky" on the memorycards they work correctly with).

[dragonmate]

Jim,

I tried re-formatting the card. One out of ten images still had the distorted lines at the bottom. Would you call that an improvement? :-)

Here's a photo ( taken from my trusty old Nikon 2100) of the Teac card which was on sale at Singapore. It was bundled with an Avive Platinum Card Drive 2.0. I put the two together and I couldn't read them on any of my four USB slots. That must be a clue.

I hope you're right about the problem not being with the TZ-1. I'd hate to tell my wife that I just bought a lemon.

Vic

[JimC]

I had aMemory Stickthat was causing this kind of problem at one time. So, I'd suspect the card first.

If you have access to another card (perhaps a nearby dealer may have some demo cameras that have cards in them you could try with your camera in the store), I'd see if the same behavior existsusing another card.

If so (same symptoms with a different card)get a replacement camera if your dealer will swap it out. If not (a different card works fine), I'd see about getting the card exchanged.

My bet would be that card is the culprit.

[rey]

I've read somewhere that you can also do a scandisk on your memory card using your PC. I've never tried this, but it should work. But if there are problems with your memory card, it will tag the problematic areas and not use them. So if you can swap card it would be better.

[dragonmate]

I first reformatted the card using my PC. Then I reformatted it again using the camera. The last 40 or so photos I took after that were absolutely clean. I hope that did it. I'll let you guys know after I come back from my one week vacation.

Just in case, I did buy another 512MB card, which carries a warranty. I tested this one and it's working fine. Jim seems to be right that it's not the camera thats the culprit. Keeping my fingers crossed, though.

[dragonmate]

Just got back from my vacation. The Teac card is definitely defective. Not only were the nasty lines still present, I eventually lost all the 30+ photos saved on it. Good thing I brought along an extra card. From now on, I'm not buying a memory card without a warranty.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"The TZ-1 is great! The stabilized zoom in a compact sized camera is just what I wanted.

style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #000000"Thanks again for the replies.

[Norm in Fujino]

A lesson learned? You get what you pay for. Those cheapie cards sold from fly-by-night vendors on the net may be attractive, but disastrous. Buy from reputable vendors.