need help with my camera

[sony mavica]

so about 4 days i bid on a lot of 2 cameras won them for $5 that including shipping cost they are old cheaper brand cameras one i have a problem is a 2.0mp with digital zoom and manual focus it takes a cf card i am using a 1gb card i bought this camera because it takes ok photos from what the seller posted in the listing also he says you can take like 1000+ (if you don't use the flash) photos using 2300mAh battery's due to it not having a zoom motor so will be good when i just wannna take random photos here and there

my problem is the only way to use the cf card is to format it in the camera but there is no way to get the photos off it because if i connect it to my pc via the usb cable it just asks me to format the cf card same thing happens if i use a card reader anybody have any idea what i could try to be able to copy photos to my pc or know what might cause this problem

[Ampera]

So if your connecting the CF card to your computer by using the camera as a card reader, it might just be a bust camera. CF is stupid as it uses a PATA interface like (infact almost the same) as old IDE-PATA.

I have no clue who decided it was a good idea to have a bunch of standing pins, but it normally ends up breaking.

However if you can take and review pictures on the camera off the CF card, it might just be the USB passthrough. Or if it's a really old camera, it might in some chance be a bad/improper driver.

Either way you might want to try a CF reader. You could probably find one in an old computer tat dump, or for pennies on Ebay. They normally come with crap like an SD card reader (not SDHC or SDXC mind you) and some obscure formats that nobody uses anymore, and probably never did.

But if you just got a 5 dollar lot of 2 CF cameras for quick pictures, you might want to invest in a cheap smartphone for use as a WiFi tablet, but pocket sized. Idk if the iPod touches have cameras, but the IPhone 2G/3G both have ok 2MP sensors, and you can use the internal memory (way more than 1GB) to store photos. I got mine for 30 bucks off ebay, and stuck Whited00r on it to make it more modern and to avoid activation. And not only do you get a camera you get an iPod, little game thing for random stuff here and there, and a very simple pocket computer, sorta like a PDA, but newer.

If your in the mood for something a bit better and have an Amazon Prime account, you can get the BLU R1 HD, which has since replaced my iPhone 3G, and is a decent android phone for 60 bucks prime, with a small lockscreen banner ad.

These phones can have decent cameras, like the BLU R1 HD with flash and 8MP rear camera, and they are phones so you can run apps and stuff and if wanted can be loaded with a SIM card for calls and data.

But the final idea on the CF card is to do the old troubleshooting steps. Use another reader, use another computer, different OS maybe, try different cards. There can be any number of reasons the card isn't working down to bent or improperly seated pins, a corrupted card, an alien format not supported by your OS (Try GPart/GParted, it supports everything pretty much), a bad CF to PC passthrough, the works.

5 Dollars is not bad including shipping for a cheapo camera as they can be used for different things. I am pretty sure the CF card would use something like FAT16/FAT32/EXFAT, which works on just about everything, but it could be something like HFS/EXT/NTFS or whatever.

Hope this helped, for more resources on the phone idea hit up ReviewTechUSA for a BLU R1 HD review, and TheIBookGuy (Now The8BitGuy) on his using an iPhone 2G with whitedoor as a daily driver.

Happy snapping!

[edy]

It might help if you provided the names of the cameras and model numbers. There may be manuals, firmware updates or forums where we can search for similar issues to see how they were solved. What brand and model?

As far as the CF card goes, why not format it in the computer first and confirm you can read and write to the card between several computers. Then stick it into the camera and see if it is recognized. It may even be a faulty CF. Make sure you format on the PC with what the camera is designed to take (FAT32?). Don't let the camera format it.

Again, please share the camera name/model.