From: Gloria Shird

I plugged in my Canon PowerShot G2 to transfer my photos to iPhoto. iPhoto said there were 93 pictures and I, too, knew there were 93. However, only 80 downloaded. I eventually had to erase all the downloaded pictures from the camera to make an attempt at downloading the remaining 13. It was tedious--I had to check each photo to see if it was on the computer before I erased it from the camera.

I called Canon and a tech there said iPhoto didn't have enough memory to download them all. Is this true? My computer has 512MB of RAM. I couldn't figure out how to allocate more memory to iPhoto. I used to be able to do it under Get Info in OS 9.

Looking forward to your reply,
Gloria

PS. I have found all your books to be great!

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That is an absolutely nonsensical answer. 512MB is more than enough, and besides, you're using Mac OS X, so memory really isn't an issue.

My guess is that some of the photos were not in JPEG format, which is what iPhoto understands. (Most digital cameras can take certain photos in, for example, TIFF format for extra quality.)

Next time it happens, you should switch back to the Finder and download the pictures manually by copying them off of the memory card icon. Or use Image Capture. Both of these concepts are described in iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual.

Hope this helps!

David

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Hi David,

First off, many, many thanks for such a useful series of books! I do Mac consulting and your books have answered many challenges.

I have a Canon S30 that had a similar problem as Gloria Shird's G2: it would not download all of the pictures from the camera (if there were a large number).

I spoke with Canon's tech help, and we determined that the problem was with the camera falling asleep. At first they tried to blame a lack of memory in my G4 tower, but they quickly backtracked upon hearing that it has 1.5GB of RAM.

The best workaround is to use a card reader. My Lexar FireWire reader works quickly and without any sleep issues, not to mention saving my Canon's battery.

Best regards,
Ron Elkan

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