CHR Constant Error on D200

[Steven G Webb]

Thank you Michael. You are always a wealth of useful information.

[Dirk]

Steve promise me that you buy a good cart reader and let the D200 be fixed if necessairy as it is one of your work horses on photo!

Lucky that the D200 seem very rugged and often have read that they can survice mistreatment
one reason for me to buy one ..

I use several brands and always take some time to insert a new card in da slot , never with force tough

only once in greece with the d70 i hda the cha error but that disapeared when i fed him a good brand card ...

(the card that didn't work was swapped the next day)

[Steven G Webb]

Oh for sure it'll be repaired. I will feel uneasy until the pin module is replaced. It's working fine but I do not know if the connection behind the pin was compromised. I'm feeling lucky that bending the pin put us back in an operational state and it will get us through the upcoming project. I've already sent an estimate request to my favorite shop.

The D200 is a rugged camera. You may remember almost two years ago I was hit by a motocross quad racer who ran off the track. Luckily I was slammed into by the racer, not the machine (he was ejected) my camera and lens wet sailing and the only damage to to the grip (the door was ripped off and the battery clips broken). Another battle tough product is Quantum flash products. That out of control quad mowed down my remote flash and light stand. The flash, battery and Pocket Wizard all came out unscathed, the light stand came out looking like an aluminum pretzel.

[Dirk]

yeah i remember that steve , every thing physically ok now ? I love my "beast" as i call it , tough i tend to take good care of it it is nice to know that it can withstand such a great accident fairly well

but far more important is that you are well and fine

[Steven G Webb]

I'm well and kicking, thanks for remembering. It took me several weeks to work out all the kinks. Nothing permanent more than age catching up with me. I don't shoot motocross anymore, not that I won't I just finally broke the barrier for horses. I did have a strange experience at a motocross track shortly after I healed up. I was in the infield between sections of track where bikes passed three directions. Great spot where I could get them going left, right and toward me. I got dizzy and had a minor panic attack. I could be run over by a stampede of horses, but they move much slower than flying motorcycles.

[cyclohexane]

Steve, glad to hear the accident had no lingering effects.

No picture's worth needlessly risking your life. Hey, if it means we end up homeless because that's the only work left, well, there are some boxes behind the grocery store we can live in. We can be neighbors!

[Steven G Webb]

You're right Michael about no picture being worth the risk of life. And no better than the motocross was paying even less so. Those boxes behind the grocery store were looking pretty good there for a while. Maybe things will pick up.

[dmthompson]

Originally Posted by Songman45

Thank you, thank you all for your contributions. I took a look at the CF card pin holes with a magnifying glass. My first thought was Oh My Gawd! What appears to be quite normal to the naked (50 yr old) eye turns out to be quite alarming. This is why I admire the guys over on the Macro board so much. Anyway, I have a badly distorted hole in nearly the middle. An examination with the same magnifier of the pins in the camera revealed the bent pin, which incidentally matches with the card's distorted hole.

Fortunately the pin was bent only in one spot, near the base and was only leaned toward the adjacent pin. A tiny screwdriver was quite capable of pushing the pin back into place. Thanks to the steady hand and sharp eye of my significant other/partner the pin is now aligned.

We purchased a new Scandisc Ultra card and ever so carefully (mind you we are quite gentle always) seated the card into the camera. BINGO! Formatted and functional now. We will be purchasing an additional card for the upcoming assignment. Just so I can put a new card in both cameras. A second card also shows a small distortion, I'm guessing what ever started the pin misalignment, once it was bent a little, it dug a little furrow in this card as well.

For now there will be no card removal. Until now I've preferred to transfer the images by way of card reader. Since I'm a bit leery about the integrity of the pin that was bent I don't want to stress it.

My new friends at Garland Camera and Repair who did a wonderful job repairing my 28-70 2.8 lens will probably be installing a replacement card reader module on the camera.

Disaster avoided, and a sigh of relief. Again thanks to all for the supportive posts to this thread.

I'm glad to see you had a temp fix for your problem but this brings a question to mind that I have thought about from time to time. Is the SD card with the slide in connectors better than the CF card with the pins that can be bent easly? I have forgotten the name of the new card Nikon is using and I have never seen one. What kind of connectors does it have? I have read that is inbetween the size of a CF and an SD card.

Dwight

[Steven G Webb]

I don't know that I'd call the pins easy to bend. I've been using cameras that use CF cards for over 6 years, four of those owning a D200 and about one more owning two of them and this is the first pin bend I've experienced. I may have avoided this entirely had I paid attention to the cards and their care.

Partly because it's what I'm used to, but I like the physical size of CF over SD. For decades now we've been on miniaturization overload. I of course think its grand that personal computers no longer need full buildings of space and that we can have televisions with cabinets that are inches thick. I find that buttons on phones are sometimes so small it is difficult to press the one intended. Where cameras are concerned, they are smaller than comfortable to hold, and the drive to make them smaller is creating the unnecessary need for the controls to be smaller and the memory cards are following suit. Sure a body like a D70 or D90 are small and lightweight, that's not a selling point for some. Even the slightly larger D200 or D300 is better balanced with a battery grip installed particularly with a heavy lens.

Then comes the handling of the card itself. Fitting the smaller card into the smaller slot, then getting it out and into a reader is more challenging for me, just because there isn't enough mass to hold on to. Other's may like it, I don't

[Dirk]

yeah sometimes we have to learn a lesson, our gear may be rugged and can handle a mistreatment or even a accident . Micheal is right NO picture is more important than safety
or well being of the photographer .

A back neighbour was killed in india by a elephant while capturing a endangered bird .. although the guides did say not to step out of the vehicle , he had to do it and paid with his life