Yesterday I went out to capture some late fall golden sunlight with the
E-M5. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing about 30 mph but I thought
maybe I could capture some "artistic" blurred images. Unknown to me
that was the beginning of a strange adventure.
As soon as I got outside and turned on the camera I saw a strange (and
undocumented) error display screen from the camera... a large, analog
clock face with something like Year/Month/Day displayed in orange on a
black background. It was a surprise. After thinking about it for a
moment I realized that it must be a warning message that the date and
time were not set. But it didn't bother me that the date and time might
not be correct. I was going to grab a handful of images and be done
with it. The sun was going down, the light was changing rapidly and I
wanted to take pictures, not fiddle with the camera's clock. Bad
decision.
But first, how did it happen? I tend to forget that the camera is on if
I have it connected to a USB port to download images. I remembered that
I had twice run the battery to exhaustion recently. I had thought
nothing of it at the time and had merely recharged the battery. The
first time it happened there were no other repercussions. But this time
was different because the date and time were lost. The E-M5 manual
says: "The date and time settings will be returned to the factory
default settings if the camera is left without the battery for
approximately 1 day. The settings will be cancelled more quickly if the
battery was only loaded in the camera for a short time before being
removed. Before taking important pictures, check that the date and time
settings are correct."
It would appear from the second sentence above that the date/time
settings are maintained by some sort of capacitor rather than a separate
battery. Therefore, if the battery has only been in a short time the
capacitor may not be fully charged and the date/time may be lost in less
than a day. But the fact that the date/time would be set to factory
defaults didn't bother me. I didn't care what the date and time might
be. Maybe the announce date of the E-M5. Maybe 00:00:00. Maybe
Maitani's birthday. I didn't care. But I should have and you should
too. Here's why.
When I started shooting there were already about 100 images on the card
which had previously been downloaded. The last image number ended in
335. I shot 17 images and then tried to download using my Win7 system
and a download application. When it listed the files on the card the
only things that appeared in the list were the images that had already
been there... the last image was 335. It was as though the new images
didn't exist. I scratched my head for a few seconds, disconnected the
camera from the computer and started reviewing images on the camera's
display screen. There were the missing images but with nothing
displayed where the date and time should be. It was as though the data
were ASCII blanks and not numerics. I reconnected the camera and used a
Windows file utility directly on the flash card without any intervening
application software. Same result... the files didn't exist. I tried a
freebie Windows file recovery utility. Same result again. The files
didn't exist unless I told the utility to ignore the directory and go
for low level data. That got the files with 0000:00:00 00:00:00 for
date/time stamps but with file names generated by the utility. Better
than nothing but not ideal.
Finally, I tried Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu did much better since it saw and
recovered all the proper file names and also substituted 0000:00:00
00:00:00 for the apparently blank time stamps. But even it was
mysteriously confused. At first I didn't think it had worked since I
didn't see the files listed. I had expected them at the end of the
list. In fact, they were at the beginning of the list. I then assumed
that the list was sorted by date/time and all the 0s were forcing the
previously missing files to the top of the list. I then forced a sort
by file name... or so I thought. Rather than sort to the bottom of the
list where they should have been they continued to maintain their
position at the top. I still haven't figured that one out. I gave up
pondering that development and decided to be happy that I had my files
back with proper alpha-numeric names with numbers running from 336 to 352.
Moral of the story: When you see the orange clock face warning message
you should immediately reset the date/time. Maybe Apple utilities are
smarter but I was surprised that even Ubuntu Linux didn't get it
completely right. And I was especially surprised that this simple bug
has apparently persisted in Windows at least throughout the lifetimes of
WinXP and Win7 and likely much longer. Makes me wonder too what Oly
used for testing. Probably hired the US HealthCare.gov web developers. :-)
Chuck Norcutt (all mentally tuckered out)
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