Why do I get image corruption?

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pwnell
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Why do I get image corruption?

Post by pwnell »

I have a Canon 7D II tethered via USB3 to a Windows 10 PC. PC is very high end, worked for two years fine. Same with the camera. The USB3 cable is up to spec, also high end. Suddenly I am getting 1 - 5 corrupt images when shooting tethered in a session of about 1600 photos. Why is that? The actual RAW image is corrupt. See below.

Image

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Smokedaddy
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Post by Smokedaddy »

I'd wager it's the card reader.

-JW:

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

If you are referring to a SD / CF card reader then it is impossible. These files are captured via USB directly from the camera to the PC. There are no SD/CF cards involved.

Smokedaddy
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Post by Smokedaddy »

pwnell wrote:If you are referring to a SD / CF card reader then it is impossible. These files are captured via USB directly from the camera to the PC. There are no SD/CF cards involved.
Looks like I need to learn how to read. 8) Maybe the USB 3 port.

Dunno,
-JW:

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

Smokedaddy wrote:Looks like I need to learn how to read. 8) Maybe the USB 3 port.
All good - I could have been more clear. I have switched to a different USB3 controller on the same PC - will see if that makes a difference.

Macro_Cosmos
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Post by Macro_Cosmos »

It's probably not the card reader, neither would it be the PC's fault or even the USB ports.

1600 photos is more than just a lot, my session of 500 makes me grin already. Have you checked the shutter's life? Not that a broken shutter would produce something horrendous like this, but maybe?

I'm putting my money on the camera or USB drivers.
If you're bothered, you can try to weed out the potential causes... ie shoot 1600 frames without the PC in the equation... then use a new SD card... use a new card reader.

I'll start with using another camera to shoot tethered.

lonepal
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Post by lonepal »

Hi;

When viewing the raw images with default windows photo app I had problems like this before.

Did you try opening the corrupted raw image with capture one or lightroom etc?

Just an experience.

If there is no difference I also think it is about usb ports, try using the main usb ports on motherboard not front ports or an usb hub. Of course with a good quality cable, the best is the cable that comes with camera.
Regards.
Omer

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

Macro_Cosmos wrote:I'll start with using another camera to shoot tethered.
As I said there is no card reader. I do not have another camera I can tether, and I do not have another PC unfortunately. Shutter count is much less than what I had on the much poorer built T3i before the 7D II so I do not think it is that.

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

lonepal wrote:Hi;

When viewing the raw images with default windows photo app I had problems like this before.

Did you try opening the corrupted raw image with capture one or lightroom etc?

Just an experience.

If there is no difference I also think it is about usb ports, try using the main usb ports on motherboard not front ports or an usb hub. Of course with a good quality cable, the best is the cable that comes with camera.
Oh no - the JPG preview is fine, it is *when* you open the RAW in LightRoom / PS that you see the corruption. I also checked with the native Windows RAW codecs and it shows the same corruption.

I am using main USB ports on rear of motherboard, but like I said I'll try a different controller as my system has two.

JKT
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Post by JKT »

I once had similar issues. It turned out to be not quite fully seated M.2 extension card. Yours could naturally be something completely different.

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

JKT wrote:I once had similar issues. It turned out to be not quite fully seated M.2 extension card. Yours could naturally be something completely different.
My PC is overclocked however it has been stable for years. I have removed the overclock to see if that helps. Hardware should be fine ... 1.5kW PSU, liquid cooling etc.

Using a different USB controller did not resolve it.

Macro_Cosmos
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Post by Macro_Cosmos »

Have you updated your graphics driver?
When I was using my laptop with a 970M, a windows update screwed everything up. I would get results very similar to yours. It happened when I opened the image through Capture One, stacking made it worse.

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

Macro_Cosmos wrote:Have you updated your graphics driver?
When I was using my laptop with a 970M, a windows update screwed everything up. I would get results very similar to yours. It happened when I opened the image through Capture One, stacking made it worse.
Well everything is always updated - I am kind of OCD about that. But I do not think it is graphics card related as the path of the data would be lens, camera sensor, camera ASIC, USB bus, PCI bus, CPU/RAM, SSD, network, to Mac Pro where I do my actual Lightroom / processing work.

Macro_Cosmos
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Post by Macro_Cosmos »

Ah mac, that would have been useful info.

I rest my case here, I know nothing about MacOS. All the stuff I've mentioned was assuming you're using a windows machine, sorry about that, should have asked first. :?

Your best bet would be the process of elimination at this point. That's how I discovered the driver issue. I assume your LR etc is all up to date too. Keep us informed though, no one likes image corruption.

pwnell
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Post by pwnell »

Macro_Cosmos wrote:Ah mac, that would have been useful info.

I rest my case here, I know nothing about MacOS. All the stuff I've mentioned was assuming you're using a windows machine, sorry about that, should have asked first. :?

Your best bet would be the process of elimination at this point. That's how I discovered the driver issue. I assume your LR etc is all up to date too. Keep us informed though, no one likes image corruption.
But I am! All the work is being done on my Windows PC. I only copy the RAW images from the Windows PC to the Mac when I work on the files. But they are already corrupt on the Windows machine. So the mac has no relevance here.

Edit: To be clear: Canon 7D II is connected via USB3 cable to Windows PC's USB3 port. I use DSLR Remote Pro to capture tethered photos from the camera straight to the Windows PC's SSD. 1 - 6 RAW files out of a typical session of 1600 ptotos on the Windows SSD is corrupt - I can see it on Windows already when I try to edit the RAW image using any program that reads RAW. I can confirm the corruption when I copy the RAW file over to my LightRoom / Photoshop on the mac. But the corruption could only have happened either at:

1. Camera, 2 USB cable, 3 USB chipset, 4 RAM/CPU/SSD

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