Glad you figured it out, Chuck.
The most interesting part of your story was your admission that,
contrary to all of the folk lore, you download images using a USB
cable. I have done this ever since I got my first digicam, and have
never had a problem. But, all of the "old timers" seem to treat this as
heresy. Glad I found a compatriot! :-)
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
On 11/2/2013 7:51 PM, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
> 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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