[Canis Vulpes]

For those of you that do not know me, I am a regular at most U.K. airshows. I often travel hundreds of miles and invest time and effort photographing these events. On Sunday I was using my beloved Nikon D2x and 50 shots into the first CF card the letters CHA appeared in the remaining shots top LCD panel and the green drive read/write led was permanently on.

I figured my D2x had bit the dust and the airshow had not even started. Luckily I have a spare body but it not a D2x. I turned it off then on and it seemed okay but when I took a test shot the same thing happened.

I swapped the CF card and all was fine, I have four 2GB CF cards all Lexar 2GB professional 80X that I have used for the past four years.

As the afternoon wore on I was using the CF cards up with no further issues other than being one memory card down. When getting back home I googled Nikon 'CHA' and found it was a memory card issue or memory module of the camera. I have no idea what CHA stands for but its bad news if you are a memory card.

I managed to access the card in a reader and recovered my 50-ish photos but the card has a question mark over it.

Lexar professional cards have a lifetime warranty and I called Lexar on Monday and straight away without quibble they agreed to swap the card.

I am now awaiting a replacement from those nice Lexar people.

I have now purchased a few spare cards but it seems 2GB are out of fashion however they hold 200 RAW D2x images. The 4 and 8GB capacity are more redly available but I could not afford to loose 400 shots if a 4GB failed near full capacity.

I found Warehouse express stocking 2GB 133X professional cards and snapped a few up as spares. Shocking they were only £15ea, the 80X cost £200ea in 2005!

The morale of this story is....... you get what you pay for.....