I would have loved to have joined you Kiya, but alas I let my passport lapse, :( another one on my "to do" list.

Are you planning to meet up with us??

Sounds like a well planned day to me Kiya :up

Horus thanks for the info on " formatting " card, I haven't formatted card on each time I've used the camera but it may be a good idea to do it more often than I did :) :)

It's an early start catching a train at 7.25 am from Rome - Naples - Pompei taking 2 hours & still getting us at Pompei for 9.30 am aprox giving us most of the day to visit until our return train at 6.30 pm.

The reason I chose the longer time train is that it is the scenic route as for the "fast speed " trains taking 70 mins for the same journey & speeds up to 300 kms your zooooooooming by seeing nothing :o

It does seem from the sound of things that your card reader may be faulty if it works OK with your USB lead to camera option. The reason for using the card in the card reader is two fold, first of all it is faster than USB especially with video files and secondly it saves your camera batteries which may be a problem in some cases. As to the formatting of memory cards it is entirely up to you, but just deleting images will only free up space on the card and therefore can slow up ‘save’ times between shots. Think of it this way, if you delete two 8MB images you have freed up 16 MB of space on the card, if you then took a 20 MB image it will have to use up the ‘freed’ 16 MB and then have to find another 4 MB somewhere else on the card to store the rest, this problem becomes exaggerated the more times you delete images from your memory card the greater this allocation of free space becomes. However do not assume that it will be a serious problem to you, it wont, although if you use video the problem can be exacerbated. Formatting a memory card will completely clean the data and each image will occupy the space next to the last image and so less prone to errors rather than have the data scattered all over the card which will be the case with constant deletions. As I have said to you all before, I only offer you the advice as I see it with hopefully enough information for you to decide what you prefer to do yourselves, I prefer to do a full format after several outings with my camera, but I don’t do it every time I use it, It all depends upon how many images I may have taken or deleted or if I have used my video option. :up

Kiya it looks like you have everything sorted now so fingers crossed that everything goes to plan, it should be a great holiday. :wi Even the train ride to Pompeii should be an adventure in itself, I have the travel brochures out as we speak. :P

You're going to have a fabulous holiday Kiya!! :) :) :) :)

Oh I can maybe just squeeze you both in ;) :)

Counting down the days now...31 to go......

I think I said already some of the places we are booked for & now have a day trip to Pompei, that's an early start for a train journey, I didn't realise it was 150 kms approx from Rome - Naples - Pompei, that said once you reach Pompei Scavi station the archaeologist site/museums etc etc are just across the road from the station so we have all day at our leisure ........excited !!!!

Oh I can maybe just squeeze you both in ;) :)

Counting down the days now...31 to go......

I think I said already some of the places we are booked for & now have a day trip to Pompei, that's an early start for a train journey, I didn't realise it was 150 kms approx from Rome - Naples - Pompei, that said once you reach Pompei Scavi station the archaeologist site/museums etc etc are just across the road from the station so we have all day at our leisure ........excited !!!!

Did you manage to book the extra two seats on your flight for Horus and me? ;) :lol:
We are looking forward to a detailed account and pictures of your trip so we are all 'Watching This Space' :lol: :lol:

I'm more or less the same...I don't format after each download but do delete once I have them downloaded to computer.

Will keep a close eye on it & hopefully all will be well on holiday :)

No I don't Kiya. I always download to my computer (via the camera to computer USB cable) every time I have a few or many pictures. After downloading i check them through on screen and if there are no problems I clear the card in the camera with the 'Delete All' option.
Horus has suggested in the past that we format after each download. I don't entirely agree that this is necessary. Perhaps a format before a special trip like yours would be wise to ensure that the card is clean of any possible bits of data the MIGHT corrupt some images. Nevertheless, after formatting I think it is still best to take a couple of pics and download them just to make sure all is well.

That might all sound a bit unnecessary but I am a bit of a 'belt and braces' bloke and there is no second chance with important pics.....

Grandad.......Do you always format your card after each time you download your photos from camera to computer :?: or is that really necessary :?:

I've come close a couple times going to quickly trying to delete and came up with the "delete all" and it has been a near miss - AGH!!! I've never yet [i]deleted all [/i] by mistake but ???

I try to download often as it is super easy to hit that delete all button.

For peace of mind Kiya take a few pics on each card then download them to your computer using the camera to computer cable. If they both work OK you should have no probs. If your 2gb card is tried and trusted why not use that and take the 8gb as a backup. As Horus told you, you will get around 300 high def images on the 2gb card and that sounds like enough for a week but you have your 8gb as a backup IF you run out of memory.
You can of course do some deleting of rubbish during the week to save space but that should be done with great care because it is TOO EASY to accidentally select DELETE ALL. Much better to bring them home, download the lot to your computer and then do the sort and delete job BEFORE you reformat the card.

The bottom line would seem to be that you have a problem with your card reader. :o

Grandad I wasn't going to copy photos to card , that was just a last minute useless thought of mine just to get some use out of the card.

Would you believe it :!: .......why didn't I think of it.........your method works perfectly Grandad when using the SDHC 8GB card & connecting to computer / Elements 11 with my camera cable to USB in computer.

I tried in all 3 USB in my computer & all work perfectly :) :) :) .....I just cant understand why it doesn't work taken the card out of camera & putting that into slot in computer , yet! the SD 2GB works both ways.......strange :?

My only thought now is when taking photos in Rome with the SDHC card nothing goes wrong when I'm back home :(

Why do you want to copy from the computer to the card?

Have you tried copying to the computer using the USB cable that came with the camera and connecting it from the camera to a USB port. I always transfer direct from camera to computer in that way and never use a card reader for this transfer process.

Have you got anything important on the 8gb card? If not try reformatting in the camera. I very much doubt that the card is U/S....

Ok I have tried everything..............Elements 11 has been uninstalled & reinstalled.

The 2GB SD card works perfectly but, as soon as I try with the 8GB SDHC card it freezers everything in Elements 11, as a last resort I went to format it on the computer but it doesn't even show up to do anything with it.

I can only think it's a faulty card or I may have formatted it first of all on computer.

I had a last minute thought before I binned it, I tried it in my Digital Frame & it shows the photos on there with the SDHC 8GB card but again it's useless for me if it wont show on my computer for copying photos from computer to this card. :xx

Thanks Grandad & Horus for all the info/help. :)

Following your guide Grandad it only lets me format with No 2....the "bin" looking icon [b]highlighted[/b] , I cannot shift it to the " low level format with "tick" icon ??????

I will uninstall Elements 11 & see if that helps in anyway.

Kiya you will get about 300 images on a 2GB card if your camera is around 15 Mega Pixel and you only shoot in Jpeg. If you set your camera to take images at say 8 MB in size then you should get about 600 images on the 2GB card. Memory cards are cheap enough and I would just get another 2GB card if that size is giving you no trouble and keep it in your camera case as a spare. :up

Kiya, I downloaded the pdf for what I think is the manual for your camera. Page 178 confirms that compatible memory cards are SD and SDHC.
Page 40 gives instructions for reformatting memory cards IN THE CAMERA.
I have copied the relevant bits here. [album]5267[/album]
Use the full format in clause 2 because the dustbin option only removes any files on the card but does not completely reformat the card.
You have also mentioned problems with PSE11. I would uninstall and reinstall the program so that you know you have a clean program with a freshly formatted SDHC card and all should be well.
You talk about 2gb cards. That is not very big if you take pictures at a high resolution. I always use 8gb cards. They are so cheap now.
Hope this helps. ;)