Nikon D50 - Max Recommended Memory is 512K

Rob2006 · Aug 3, 2006

I had a problem with my Sandisk Ultra II 1G card. My wife took it to a pharmacy to have pictures developed. (My first mistake not burning a CD instead). ANyway when she put it in their machine they machine started reading the disk and their machine crashed. SHe asked for help and they tried 2 other machines and the disk became unreadable.

She brought the disk home and I put it in my PC and it says the disk is not formatted. So I put the disk in the D50 and format the disk. The carea reports that its formatted but when I go to take a picture I have a CHS error. According to the manual the CSH error means damaged disk or unreadable.

So now I am out of a 1G disk. I purchased a new 2G chip because that all they had in stock the night before our vacation.

Now battling with the pharmacy to get me a new disk because they destroyed it. THhey had my wife call SanDisk and they said you have to format it and we told them we did and they say the camera does it wrong. Then she called Nikon. They said the max size memory card is 512K and anything higher they will not support.

I was sold the 1G card when I bought the camera. The 2G card reads fine now. Am I looking for trouble in a few months for using a 2G card?

If you shoot in Raw and use a 512K card will severely limit how many pics can me stored on the card.

Ihaveaquestion · Aug 3, 2006

Damn that's messed up.

Lunatick · Aug 3, 2006

i use a 1g in my d50 with no issues, i always bring a spare 512 in my bag though just incase. never use those card reading machines! my mom recently went on a trip to jamaica, had a 2g card with about 300 pictures on it, went to a camera shop (wont say the name but it was a well known chain shop that carries professional grade gear) she put it into the machine, crashed the card and somehow made 3 copies of every picture put onto the card. she gave it to the person working there to fix it and he managed to delete half the pictures on the card, she gave it to me after to salvage the rest.

rmh159 · Aug 3, 2006

Yeah that definitely sucks. I have a 1GB card with my D50 and haven't had problems.

Tiberius · Aug 3, 2006

512K won't even store half a JPEG, much less a RAW image..... 512M, on the other hand....

I've used two 2GB cards - the Corsair 133x I normally use and a Sandisk Ultra II. I've also used a couple of 512MB cards - basic Sandisk and Sandisk Ultra II. No issues with any of the cards. On the other hand, I always download my pictures straight to the computer and from there send them to online processing services.

Rob2006 · Aug 3, 2006

I meant 512M.

Nikon wont support over 512M though.

vim · Aug 3, 2006

if u work it out its the pharmacy or the company that own the kiosk/machine that develops the data off ur card , as the card was obviously worked in the camera.
also the phamacy dont know what camera it was that took the pics, i have an old nikon d1 and use a 2gb flash card and it works flawlessly and nikon dont support 2gb in the d1! so the issue here is that the kiosk/machine or whoever owns it is accountable here as more than one machine was used and then it stopped working.
i would pursue that route m8 as nikon probably wouldnt entertain it unless it was a nikon branded cf card and within their specs and then they would try to get out of looking at it then lol.
end of the day ur out of a card and had to buy an even more expensive card as a stop gap and u should be compensated. just my oppinion m8
peace

vim

Lunatick · Aug 3, 2006

she should have bitched and moaned at the pharmacy, they would have given her a new card eventually.

Rob2006 · Aug 3, 2006

SHe did. THey made her call Sandisk and Nikon in the store. Sandisk now wants us to send the card to them so they can see if its bad, If so they will replace it.

I dont need another card though.

ShootHoops · Aug 3, 2006

Like a few others I also use a 1GB with my D50 and now I'm paranoid lol.

Unimaxium · Aug 4, 2006

I have trouble believing that Nikon doesn't recommend any more than half a gig in their camera. But I don't know much. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it uses SD and not CF? I've heard CF cards are more reliable.

fotogenik · Aug 4, 2006

I use !GB SanDisk cards exclusively in my D50 and have never had a problem. I would not however ever stick my card in anything other than my card reader or my camera.

964 · Aug 4, 2006

Yep, the lesson is: if you go to a pharmacy to print (or anywhere else), supply the images on CD or DVD. Never send away or give your memory card to anyone else...its just causes too many problems if it goes wrong...

dsp921 · Aug 4, 2006

I'm a ltttle bored so I checked an online D50 manual and it states that both Sandisk and Panasonic have been tested and approved up to 1GB.
http://www.nikonusa.com/pdf/manuals/noprint/D50_en_noprint.pdf, see page 114 if you're bored, too.

Rob2006 · Aug 4, 2006

Update: We called Nikon again last night. They stated the reason they dont support anything over 512M is they have not certified/tested anything bigger.