I'm sure this will be a stupid question to most of you but it is of concern to me. I just bought a digital camera (Fugi S3000) to take on our upcoming Trafalgar trip to Central Europe. I also bought a 256 XD picture card. If - in the middle of taking pictures on the card - the batteries give out and I have to replace them, will I lose the pictures I have already taken? The reason I am asking is that my son-in-law has the same camera and he lost quite a few shots he had taken when his battieries died. He isn't sure why that happened. Any info would be appreciated!

What does your Fuji S3000 camera manual say about low battery indication and shutdown?

With my digital cameras (Sony, Nikon & Canon), I get a low battery warning or impending shutdown indication on the LCD, followed by an automatic shutdown at some later point in time (depends on the camera). I have never lost a photo, but someday....

As long as you are using a memory card and not just internal memory for saving pictures, they will not be lost if the battery dies. On our tour, my boyfriend's battery died twice and we didn't lose any pictures.

Just re-read your post and I should mention that my boyfriend's camera is a Kodak, so I can't speak for yours...although I'm pretty sure as long as you're using a memory card, once you take a picture it will automatically be saved. Hope this helps.

The only situation in which I can envision losing pictures would be if the batteries were to die while a picture was in the process of being written to the card; this could very well corrupt the card's file system and result in the loss of some - or even all - your pictures.

As others have said, if you take heed of "low battery" warnings you'll have no problem. If your camera has rechargeable batteries, I'd suggest recharging them every night.

Regards,

Chris

And my Fuji camera adapter works on all electrical systems. I've had batteries quit and never lost a shot already taken. But I could see how a corrupted card could cause problems. I take several cards with me (they are very small and easy to swap).

Thank you for all your nice responses. I know that the manual does address the issue of low battery warnings. I just did a test with my camera, taking 2 shots, then changing the batteries - and the pictures were not lost. I guess my son-in-law's problem was caused by something else and I just hope I can avoid problems on our trip! By the way, I use an XD picture card. That's not the same thing as a memory card, is it?

Hi drifting,
yes, the XD picture card is the same thing as a memory card. There's several shapes of memory card at present, Compactflash, XD, Sony memorystick to name a few. They're really just different "packages" of the same thing. Different enough so they're incompatable with another type - the cynical (me?) amongst us would say for commercial reasons...

And while I remember, there are a number of P.C. programs designed to recover pictures from "corrupt" memory cards. I've successfully used "Digital Image Recovery" & "PC Inspector Smart Recovery" on cards that wouldn't read in my computer or camera.

When we were on our tour my boyfriend had to replace his batteries 3 different times, although we did find places to buy new ones, they were tricky to find and expensive. If you aren't planning on taking your charger, take a couple extra batteries with you. It will save you a lot of annoyance. Just a thought...

Help!
I have a 128 MB card that is "corrupted" when I try to download images but show up OK when reading them off the camera. How else can I rescue my images from Moscow?
Swissmiz

First thing's first, DON'T take any more pictures with the card before trying a file recovery. Have you got a flashcard reader?

if so, look at the following two products:

http://www.pcinspector.de/smart_media_recovery/uk/welcome.htm

or:
http://www.foto-erhardt.de/
use the search (Suchen) field looking for "digital image Recovery" and download the file.

Both utils worked for me scanning a card with confused filesystem on it. They copy any valid picture file found on the card - the only thing you seem to lose is the file number, but hey! who's really that worried when you've got your photo back.

Let us know how you get on...

My Canon S400 battery gave out while I was trying to take a picture last night. I recharged the battery this morning and all my pictures are still there, thank goodness. It was probably warning me that the battery was low but I'm not that up on all the lights and sounds, etc. so probably didn't know what it was telling me. Anyway, it's good to know that one can reasonably count on the pictures staying put.

I learned the hard way. When on tour, I will now recharge every night and reload with my backup set. When I was recharging every 2nd day and not carrying my back up set on the day's outings, I got caught with no battery life a couple of times . Carrying the backup set adds more weight to the day bag, but is a necessary evil. Also if batteries have been sitting unused for a while and you shoot night/flash, movie sound mode, it won't take long for them die. I haven't lost any shots only the ones that never happened due to no battery life left. Lesson learned!

Thanks for the info, Bob. I will check out Walmart for an extra battery. I had actually been toying with the idea of taking just the one. The last time I charged it I took over 100 pictures over a period of two weeks before it ran down. I would never take that many in a day while traveling, so was thinking maybe I could get by just charging it every night. But maybe I should err on the side of caution and buy an extra.

Happy to report Moscow pictures downloaded sucessfully from the camera via USB device instead of using cardreader-which is what I usually use. I've had trouble with this disk before (Lexar 128 MB) incidentally purchased at Walmart. Tried reformatting it but doesn't appear to have set it straight.
Swissmiz