[Annhigg]

I hate to sound so dumb, but I am wondering about cleaning pictures off the memory card. Do I only do that in the camera, or can I delete them on the computer? If I do it in the camera, is there a way to do a select of the ones I want to delete so I can do a bunch at a time? Thank you!

[lphoto]

Not sure what kind of camera you have.... but if a Canon... you deleted them all or one at a time. Why would you want to keep them on the card anyway?

[Dennis C]

Annpran, on 23 December 2010 - 06:00 AM, said:

I hate to sound so dumb, but I am wondering about cleaning pictures off the memory card. Do I only do that in the camera, or can I delete them on the computer? If I do it in the camera, is there a way to do a select of the ones I want to delete so I can do a bunch at a time? Thank you!

You can delete them either way, in the camera or on the computer. If you end up deleting all of them, then when you put the card back in the camera you want to "initialize" the card again in order to get ALL of your useable space back.

[KeithH]

Annpran, on 23 December 2010 - 06:00 AM, said:

I hate to sound so dumb, but I am wondering about cleaning pictures off the memory card. Do I only do that in the camera, or can I delete them on the computer? If I do it in the camera, is there a way to do a select of the ones I want to delete so I can do a bunch at a time? Thank you!

Upload them all to your computer, then the best practice is to re-format the memory card in the camera, not in the computer. The camera better understands the format needed for the card to work well with that camera.

Because photos always differ somewhat in the amount of data they contain (file size), when you delete a image the free space created may not be sufficient to record another image in the same range of memory addresses. When that happens you wind up with a corrupt, a likely useless, image file.

[MichelleMPhotos]

Yep what keith said. That's how I do it.

[Annhigg]

Thank you so much everyone! In another thread they were talking about what they miss, and one thing I DON'T miss is the small card. I thought I was really going for it in my first point and shoot digital camera when I got a 256MG card, instead of a 64. Now I have a 16GB and love that it can hold so many pictures!!

[Annhigg]

lphoto, on 23 December 2010 - 06:33 AM, said:

Not sure what kind of camera you have.... but if a Canon... you deleted them all or one at a time. Why would you want to keep them on the card anyway?

I don't want to keep them on my card, but just a little slow at housekeeping....

[wendiandtravis]

Definitely format the card in camera. A dear friend of mine used to do it using her computer. One day she accidentally clicked format on her hard drive, not the memory card, and didn't realize it until it was too late.

[LeighJ]

It can depend on the camera. My point and shoot would let you delete one at a time OR mark some as "protected" and erase everything that was NOT protected.

I do what Keith suggested (which is the best idea.) so I don't know if my SLR works that way.

[KeithH]

LeighJ, on 23 December 2010 - 03:14 PM, said:

It can depend on the camera. My point and shoot would let you delete one at a time OR mark some as "protected" and erase everything that was NOT protected.

I do what Keith suggested (which is the best idea.) so I don't know if my SLR works that way.

My Nikon D3 and D300 does, but I've never used the protect feature.

With my 12 MP cameras I don't use memory cards bigger than 4 GB. Four GB cards hold about 200 Raw files. I would be very upset to lose that many images from a card going bad, let alone losing 4 times that many images from a 16 GB card. I use 2GB cards when I shoot JPEG (sports).

I advocate multiple, smaller cards, over 1 big card, and upload images to my computer ASAP.

Knock on wood - I have never had an SD or CF card go bad, and I've never had a corrupt image file.