I just purchased a Nikon D40 and took 250 shots. I downloaded them to my hard drive via the cable, directly to my drive (just like I have done with my Nikon Coolpix for several years). I see the thumbnails for all the photos, but on about 5 of them, when I try to open them, they say Invalid File Format. I tried downloading them again to a separate file - same thing. Of course, they are my best shots! I am using Corel Photo Paint - never had a problem before. Also tried renaming the file, to no avail.

Help???

photogmomma

try Picasa which is free and see if it works for you:
http://picasa.google.com/download/

Some HELP in posting on Computing.net plus free progs and instructions Cheers

Thanks for the suggestion. I'd rather not install another program which does exactly the same as the file system on my machine. It still doesn't explain why I can't open 5 or so of the files. Anyone know why?

photogmomma

They may be corrupt. If you send me one I'll take a look at it in Photoshop.

I have a Nikon D70. I download from my 512 Mb camera card directly to my computer through my Epson Stylus Photo R300. I then open them with any viewer, I just use Windows picture and fax viewer.

How big is your card? Was it the last ones you shot you can't open?

Lot's of info about DLSR here -

http://www.kenrockwell.com/index.htm

Jimi.

I have a 2GB card. And the ones I can't open are interspersed among the others. They are not the last ones. I can open them with Windows Picture viewer.

I love the Rockwell site. Lots of good tips on taking great pictures. It was because of his site I decided on the Nikon D40.

photogmomma

Ok. I think I understand now. When you said you can't open the file, I thought you can't download them and view them. To me (I might be wrong) if you download a jpeg to your hard drive. Then you double click on them and view them through Windows Picture viewer (or irfan view, or any viewer) then you have opened the file. So maybe what you are saying is that you can not open those particular jpegs in you photo editing program. That would be different, and since I only use Photoshop, I would not know what to say, except maybe to suggest that you uninstall your photo editing program, then reinstall it. Good luck.

James.

you may have shot them in the RAW format. The Nikon program will convert them for you.

I have exactly the same problem, except that I cant open any file. I have tried both drag and drop and the Nikon software to transfer them. All are JPEG, the meta data is all there and the thumbnails show OK. When I double-click on a file I get the message "Error reading File" from MS Photo Editor. A colleague can open them OK using Picasa. I want to keep my machine as standard as possible so dont want to have to install any other software. Any ideas?

Found the answer at http://nikonasia-en.custhelp.com Just because it ends in jpg doesnt mean it is a JPEG!!!

Question
I can't seem to place an image from my Nikon camera into my presentation (or other) program. I get an error or warning message about problems with the file.

Answer
Nikon digital cameras record images in the "EXIF" (Exchangeable Image File Format) file type. Even though the file name (when shooting compressed files) ends in ".jpg" it is not a regular JPEG image. This format includes not only the JPEG picture data but also the shooting information (f/stop, shutter speed, lens, etc.) and other text-based data. Writing this type of information is part of the global "DCF" standard for images from digital cameras.

Some applications do not properly read this data and will display various errors and warning when opening these files. The only way to use an image in one of these programs is to open it in an image-editing program and save the file to a new file name. This changes the file from an EXIF image and saves it into whatever format is chosen, stripping out all of the extra data.

Contact the developer of the program which does not properly open EXIF files for possible updates.