Hey guys and gals... NEW VIDEO A DAY thread is now functional.....

Interesting. If you don't mind a slight critique: the crooked horizons bothered me while watching and I think the music is a bit over the top. Otherwise, good work.

Hello there
recently i have finished my new photo project about night photography and steel wool.
i have captured orbs, spirals, full cirles all by slow shutter speeds

you can see the video of the project here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OuZ0b4ZZls

My D4 destroyed five SanDisk CF-Cards the last months. I´ve got ERROR-Messages and there was no way to rescue the pictures files. Because of that I´ve lost a job and the customer. The last CF-Card I took out of the D4 was unbelievable hot.
First the NPS-Service in Germany told me, there´s no problem with the camera. Three months, a changing of the display and a repair of the autofocus system later, Nikon accepts the problem with the CF-card slot of my D4 camera. Now I want to change the camera. The D4 is very expensive. The camera should work in a professional way. But my D4 is the most expensive one, because it´s a instrument for loosing jobs and customers.

Regarding overheated cards in the D4....

I just got back from a trip to Sedona Arizona and ran into this problem with Delkin CF cards.
I had a 32 Gig Delkin card in the CF slot and I shot all day long with it then realized my camera was
acting odd so I turned it off then on and saw the message about "This memory card cannot be used" on the
screen. I then opened the card slot door to smell some burning type smell although not too strong...
I removed the card and it was almost about to melt but it didnt get that far. It was so hot I could not hold
it though.

I am worried that this might have damaged my D4 but I wont know until I get another card for it.
Im amazed that the camera would even let the card get hot like that. I do have other Delkin cards of
the same make but I wont put them in the slot for fear of damaging my camera if it has not already been.

Avoid Delkin cards. I had the same problem with my D300s believe it or not... but not with heat.. more like just
file corruption everywhere.

On page 443 of the D4 User's Manual it lists the "approved" CF cards. They are all Sandisk and Lexar. I have tried others, but have not found any that will work. Err blinks in the information finder and the camera won't focus or shoot. The XQD on the other hand, works great and indicates 1.4K images remaining at Large/Fine/JPEG setting. Very efficient, and maybe the future. Lexar CF cards format and work great also. Fortunately, I still have two D2x's and a D3 to use the CF cards that are "off brand" with. I suspect we will all find similar results.

aorobert said:
XQD cards are so fast I will only use CF for backups now.

XQD is where it's at. I wish the D4 had two of them.

where did you buy the card ?
i gather there are a lot of SanDisk forgeries on e bay

Does the D4 work now with the QXD card in place? And was the CF card inserted with the camera on or off? Was there any problem getting the card in the slot? If off, and no problem getting card into camera slot, it certainly sounds like a warranty issue provided no other condition exists.

billmfoto said:
I inserted a SanDisk Ultra II CF card into my new D4. It didn't work ! Not only did it not work, but there camera went into some kind of "green light blinking/freeze mode." I turned it off, but light kept blinking. I removed the card and an electrical fire burned smell came from the card and camera !

WTF ???????

I am using those in my D4 without a problem, 32 and 16 GB are working fine. Sorry to hear about your problem, I hope the camera is fine.

Jürgen

I inserted a SanDisk Ultra II CF card into my new D4. It didn't work ! Not only did it not work, but there camera went into some kind of "green light blinking/freeze mode." I turned it off, but light kept blinking. I removed the card and an electrical fire burned smell came from the card and camera !

WTF ???????

XQD cards are so fast I will only use CF for backups now.

My experience with Kingston and Transcend cards has been god awful. Transcend do overheat and melt (that was in industrial apps) that caused random data failures on files, and then on the whole card. I doubt a camera would cause that, but then again the heat on the cards has more to do with data transfer (more electricity pumping through it)than anything else. (Assuming you are not in a dessert.)

There are some photographers that say the card don't matter. I find people who say that either A: Have a lack of interest in learning the differences or B: Haven't had a bad experience yet.

So many threads on this but Lexar and Sandisk are the only two that are continuously suggested by most and I concur. Even if one get's corrupted, they both offer free software that you can recover almost everything.

Anecdotal cool story bro, but I have some 32GB Transcend 400x cards that seem to overheat or otherwise stop working right under heavy use (11fps) in the D4. You get a card error, and if you take them out, wait a few seconds and put them back in they are "okay" until it happens again. The card is very warm when you remove it. This is consistent across four cards. I'll be getting some Sandisk or Lexar cards shortly, this is just what I had laying around for now (the D4 was a surprise purchase).

TimHarrison said:
I would expect all CF and SD cards to work in all cameras, but not all at the same speed obviously. The fact that only SanDisk or Lexar cards seem to be guarenteed to work means to me that this is more of a Nikon issue.

When standards are created there are many MUST and MAY statements when it comes to vendor specific implementation. To get certified all the MUSTs, well, must be met. The MAYs is where you get into a grey area of a specification.

It may also be that the D4 has a single I/O bus controller that is designed around the XQD and has the CF slot in compatibility mode. There may be things in the XQD spec w.r.t. CF compatibility mode that are not supported, partially supported, etc.

If you expect all cards to work in all cameras you will forever be disappointed.

Later,
Jeff

I would say it's more of a sd and cf manufacturer card problem than Nikon as the same thing happen not only in Nikon but in any other cameras on the market.

But whats the point of having a universal CF or SD card standard if some work and some don't. I would expect all CF and SD cards to work in all cameras, but not all at the same speed obviously. The fact that only SanDisk or Lexar cards seem to be guarenteed to work means to me that this is more of a Nikon issue.

JForhan said:
Seriously though, get the approved cards for a $6k camera. What is a few extra bucks for something you know will work.

Absolutely! Only problem is once you've bought the camera, all you can afford is the Radio Shack special.

@JForhan. I agree 100%. I'll be sticking to my SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB cards. I just happened to be testing my CF Cards to see what did and did not work. RiDATA, Viking, Transcend, and ProMaster UltraMAX all worked fine. I'll let Duracell focus on batteries.

I thought Duracell made batteries?

Seriously though, get the approved cards for a $6k camera. What is a few extra bucks for something you know will work.

I realize it worked with your D700 but this is newer technology.

Later,
Jeff

I figured a topic of cards that have trouble in the Nikon D4 would be appreciated by others so they don't have to wonder if they are the only ones with a card that does not work.

So far, I have found the following fail to work in the D4. Add your own failed cards to this thread.

Duracell Pro Photo 600x UDMA 32GB CF CArd