D800 cropped image not supported

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Matt,

Great.  I'll take a look at those as soon as I get a chance.  I can't do it from home because I don't have a high-speed connection here, so it may have to wait until Monday unless I drop in to work on the weekend.

- Phil

[Matt Kubitza]

no worries, i have waited long enough to start with, your help is greatly appreciated.

[Matt Kubitza]

Hi Phil,

I see little chance for recouping the files. When I looked at the EXIF of those I sent you, they do not talk about "cropped" at all, they refer to every size as being full size. So something must have happened in the camera to crop the images at the given point. Usually, the D800 will only switch to crop mode if you enable DX format automatic cropping. Since I do not use DX lenses on this camera, it is a real mystery to me why the camera would decide to crop an image out of the blue. Nikon is no help, typically. All they did was to advise me to uninstall the outdated software, and I should not have that problem anymore - duh. Other than that they ignored me or made no effort to help at all. Makes one wonder if one is using the right equipment.

Cheers,

Matt

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Matt,

If those files are important to you, then I am pretty sure that we can get them fixed.  It may take some trial and error though, and probably won't result in a production version of fix_corrupted_nef, but I won't give up on you.

Yes, Nikon isn't much help.  As per my comment on the fix_corrupted_nef web page:

It is very sad that this Nikon software bug penalizes only loyal Nikon owners (since it affects only people who had an older copy of the Nikon software from a previous camera), yet Nikon customer support provides no help other than suggesting that you contact your memory card manufacturer to see if the original images can be restored.

- Phil

[Matt Kubitza]

Unless there is a relatively quick fix, Phil, don't bother. These are macros of orchids and a night heron. In all there are 36 files ... I will have a look if there is anything else that can be established from the EXIF on those files. Seems to me, since they were relatively random in between the good files, that there may be a clue in the way I took them. I suspect it could have to do with manual focus, for one reason or another. I did use manual focus using the view screen on the back of the camera rather than the viewfinder, since one can zoom in on the focal point and then really get it much sharper than the autofocus would allow. Lemme see if adjacent healthy files were autofocus or not.

Matt

[Matt Kubitza]

Just checked through several of the files ... there is a mixture of auto-focus/manual focus images adjacent to the corrupted files .. so no help from that point of view ... However, I found some files that had the tag HiSpeedCrop in them where the high speed crop was "Off" and the size showed 7424x4924 cropped to 7424x4924 @ pixel0,0). Some files have this tag in them, others do not ... anyway ....

Matt

[Phil Harvey]

OK.  Well this is interesting anyway.  I haven't before encountered this Nikon crop mode.

- Phil

[Matt Kubitza]

Hi Phil,

After writing a nasty letter to Nikon they have advised me to try the new software .... Capture NX-D, which I downloaded. This software actually will let me save the images in TIFF format or JPEG. Which is one giant step forward. However, the actual size is limited to 1920x1080 pixels, a far cry from what it should be. But at least I can get at them. They are also mentioning another software from Nikon, View NX-i which I have not tried yet. I will play around with those and see what the EXIF will have to say. Will let you know.

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Matt,

Capture NX-D [...] size is limited to 1920x1080 pixels,

1920x1080.  That's ridiculous.  You would think that Nikon owners would be very upset that they bought such an expensive 2 megapixel camera.

- Phil

[Matt Kubitza]

it is that, indeed ... when I can see that the cropped image should be at least 6784 x 3788 as per EXIF .... and with a file having a size of 53.149kb one would think one would be able to get a larger image. Btw, the metadata for this particular file says

File info 1
File size 51.9Mb
image size 1920x1080

which does not show up when I put it onto your exiftool ... to boot it says under

File Info 2

Image quality RAW (12bit) ... and i know for a fact I shot with 14 bit ... and in exiftool it says NEF bit depth :n/a (JPEG) .... sigh so three ....

Matt

[Phil Harvey]

Yes.  In this characteristic type of corrupted image the bit depth and raw image size information is lost from SubIFD1, and the raw data is hidden as if it were an embedded JPEG.

- Phil

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Phil,

After writing a nasty letter to Nikon they have advised me to try the new software .... Capture NX-D, which I downloaded. This software actually will let me save the images in TIFF format or JPEG. Which is one giant step forward. However, the actual size is limited to 1920x1080 pixels, a far cry from what it should be. But at least I can get at them. They are also mentioning another software from Nikon, View NX-i which I have not tried yet. I will play around with those and see what the EXIF will have to say. Will let you know.

I'm sure the size limit is a user error as this is the first time I heard from it...

[Phil Harvey]

I'm sure the size limit is a user error as this is the first time I heard from it...

It is likely due to the corruption then.  It may be just taking one of the embedded JPEG images:

Code Select Expand

> exiftool corrupted.nef -b -otherimage | exiftool - -imagesize
Image Size                      : 1920x1080

But in this case, I don't know why it doesn't take the larger one:

Code Select Expand

> exiftool corrupted.nef -b -jpgfromraw | exiftool - -imagesize
Image Size                      : 6720x3776

- Phil

[Matt Kubitza]

Hi Phil/ Hayo

Nikon has come back with this:

"Hi Matt,

Unfortunately, you may need to follow steps to recover the corrupted files. Nikon does not offer file recovery services, you can check with your memory card company for further advice. The cause of the corruption is unknown.

We apologize,"

No kidding: .... may need to follow steps to recover the corrupted files. Ha! I have told them WHY the files seem to be corrupted, more than once. The fact that I unfortunately used the wrong NIKON Transfer software (being unaware that the old one would corrupt the files)  is to blame for the corrupted files, imho.

I guess Phil has a good point, why does the new Capture NX-D not use the larger file? Anyway, only 36 files or so .. so no biggie, I can live with the smaller images 

Matt

[Phil Harvey]

Matt,

At least Nikon customer service is consistent (see my blue comment above).

But you don't have to live with the small image.  ExifTool will extract the larger image:

exiftool -jpgfromraw -b -w _jfr.jpg DIR

This is the next best thing to having the raw data.

- Phil