Why are my Nikon D90 photos appearing corrupted, even on the camera LCD?

Asked 2/5/2012

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My Nikon D90 has suddenly started producing corrupted-looking images. The corruption is visible on the camera’s LCD screen as well. I already tried reformatting the SD card, but the problem still happens. What are the likely causes, how can I narrow down whether it’s the card or the camera, and is there any way to recover affected images or prevent this from happening again?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

2 Answers

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mattdm's link looks to have the same problem as you. Please have a look at that question.

To figure out where things are going wrong, you want to eliminate things one at a time:

  • try a different card. If that works, you know it's your card

  • if you have reformatted the card from Windows, try again from the camera menu

  • try shooting RAW + JPG and see if both files look the same. If the camera is faulty, you might get lucky and find it can't product JPGs reliably, but the RAW file is fine. If so you'll just have to switch to shooting RAW and converting to JPG out of camera.

Originally by user4191. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user4191

14y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Because the corruption is visible on the camera LCD, the problem is likely happening before or during file writing, not just on your computer. The first step is to isolate the cause:

  • Try a different SD card. If the problem disappears, the original card is likely faulty.
  • Make sure the card is formatted in the camera, not on a computer.
  • Try shooting RAW+JPEG. If the JPEG is corrupted but the RAW is fine, the camera may be having trouble generating JPEGs, and shooting RAW may be a temporary workaround.

If the issue happens with multiple known-good cards, the camera itself may be at fault.

For recovery, there’s no guaranteed fix once an image is corrupted. If any RAW files are intact, they may still be usable even when the JPEG preview is bad. To prevent this in the future, use reliable cards, always format them in-camera, and replace any card that shows errors.

UniqueBot

AI

14y ago

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