Slit scan turntabling

This morning I was getting ready to try some slit scan style turntable photography, but then my memory card wouldn't work. The camera said it had a write error, so I switched it off and on again. Then it said that the card was write protected.

I tried moving the write protect tab on the card, doing a full format and quick format on the PC, etc. but nothing seemed to work. So I checked the manufacturer's website, which had an RMA form, but the form was in French with a French address.

I tried to find the original packaging for the memory card, in case it had an English RMA address on it, or anyway it may be needed to return the packaging for an RMA. But I couldn't find the packing, I think I must have thrown it away.

Doing some googling, I came across some advice SD reader (disk write protected), which says to place tape over the write protect switch area on the card. Before doing this, I thought I better check a different SD card before putting tape on the card and possibly voiding the warranty.

So I tried a different SD card in the camera, but the camera said this card was write protected as well. I hadn't tried a different card earlier as the problem card would come up with 'format couldn't be completed' (or similar) message when I formatted it in Windows, indicating the problem was with the card.

However, with this new information that the camera may actually be at fault, I googled for info on this problem. I found a suggestion in this thread: card write protected on new canon eos 450d

I've not experienced this problem myself but I know someone who has and they were able to fix it very easily and this is what they did.

If you look inside the slot for the SD card you should see a little micro switch which is what detects the position of the write protect slot on the card itself. His was stuck in the on position the whole time but he found that with the use of a small screwdriver he could just tap the micro switch and it pinged back into the off position where it should be normally and from then on it worked perfectly and has never caused him a problem since. Essentially it had just got temporarily stuck and just needed a little tap to free itself.

Now obviously you do this at your own risk and you may very well not want to stick anything inside the SD slot of your new camera and I dare say that if you did and the company found out that this is what you had done that they wouldn't give you a refund so I'll leave it up to you to decide if it's worth the risk or not.

My 450D is out of warranty, so I took the battery out for a few minutes, and also tried poking (with a wire) the side of the SD card slot where a write protect slot detector would be located. I didn't hear or see any micro switch pinging back into place, but after replacing the battery the camera now works again.

Most of the rest of the day I worked on doing the slit scan style turntable photography.

In the evening I also watched an episode of Star Trek Enterprise with Mauser and Bo, then made a Knight hood for Fred Goodwin and did nothing for most of the evening.