A local production company saw all it's equipment lost in a fire including 3 EX1 cameras. Out of curiosity I fished the SxS memory cards out of the melted cameras, to my surprise, not only were they still good, but all the data in them at the time was usable.

Wow - That's impressive ruggedness!!! How did the fire start? They were insured, right?

Contact Sony with the story and photos. You may be part of their next marketing campaign. Maybe with "compensation" too.

Impressive, but most flash media is very durable. There was a UK technology TV show a few years back that tested various flash cards in different ways, one of which was driving over them and another was a hot cycle in a washing machine.

Go out onto the web and you can find all sorts of tales, even people who test cards for kicks.

I am surprised the card was left in the camera when it was stored.

John

Good point John. During this moment of grief, I'll make sure to lecture them on better media storage practices.

OK I'll bite. I'm a fairly new EX1R user, but I'll admit that's the first I've read about removing cards from the camera when not in use. I just looked through the manual and did a quick forum & google search but found nothing.

I leave cards in mine too. Don't worry about it!

Thanks Andy. I always left a CF card in my digital camera. Seems like it would be more wear on the camera to swap SxS cards in and out constantly.

Clearly one can leave the memory cards in the camera, all the more as the camera can serve as a memory card reader when connected to your computer via USB. As someone mentioned above, I would think that continuous removal and putting back memory cards could be more problematic than leaving the card in the camera in the long run. Likewise, as a photographer I don't remove the flash card from my 5D at the end of every shoot.

When filming concerts, I also routinely removed a card for downloading whilst the camera is filming on the other memory card, without any issues at all.

All this is the benefit of a tapeless solutions. The point of my post was to show just how reliable memory card are, and not really to debate media management practices. I, for one, am completely sold on Sony EX solutions (EX1, EX3 and PMW-350) and hope to get a F3 shortly as well.

This thread reminds of a story from the 9/11 disaster. In the rubble they found a squashed Canon digital camera and the memory card was still intact, not sure what pictures were on it though.

When you consider that memory cards are encased within the camera, then they have an extra layer of protection against rain, snow, wind and in this case fire.

man, this is just unbelievably crazy! the cards are indeed impressive.

Omg!!!!!!!!!!!!

I would not be entirely surprised if the core electronic internals of the camera still worked after a cleanup of soot off the boards. The peripheral stuff which melted obviously cannot as conductors will be shorting together.

I have an Hitachi stereo amp which got roasted in a housefire and still works to this day.

There was a story a while back of a memory camera having gone to the bottom of the Atlantic from an ocean liner, getting fished back up again in a trawl net and the memory card was still operable. The owner got his happy snaps back.