I've just returned from a 3 week, 8 country, 5400 mile road trip to Nordkapp in the Arctic Circle.

Last night I spent 5 hours transferring the files onto my hard disc only to find that one card had failed.
It gave the message "This card is electronically locked" whilst I was using it, in the K5iis, and now isn't recognised in the macbook and only shows as an empty drive in a windows PC.

It covers photos and video from 2 days of our trip, including a visit to Copenhagen, and is probably half full (8Gb).

Can anyone recommend a data recovery company or some software (windows or mac)that might work? I have tried photorec but it just records error reading sector message.

Phew. We are now back from our trip. 5484 mile and 8 countries in 3 weeks.
Unfortunately events conspired against us and we never made the Trogstillen. However we did make Nordkapp and stopped off at plenty of photogenic spots on the way. I shall upload some soon, once I have sorted through them all.

The mossies were horrendous. Avon skin so soft, craghopper mosi proof clothing, deet, citronella and even marmite didn't put the little b*ggers off. Some nights we just had to abandon the camp and lock ourselves in our tents (even then they got in somehow).

It was a fanatastic trip and I did end up having to buy extra SD cards in Stockhom

Last night I spent 5 hours transferring the files onto my hard disc only to find that one card had failed. I shall start a new thread to see if anyone has any suggestions for data reovery.

Will do. Thaks for that.

Smeggy
I'll see what I can do. I have no doubt that we will stop for plenty of photo opportunities around here so I'll try and replicate as many of these as I can.

Gamka
See if you can manage to scan them in and I'll see what I do.

1 Battery charger hard wired into the car and another 'international' charger in the camera bag along with 4 spare batteries.

I have been to WEX and added 2 more 32GB cards to the arsenal.

We have a small Samsung netbook with a 125GB hard drive which I might consider taking along as a 'just in case'.

I have no idea what 'flavour' the Skin so soft' is I left that bit of research to SWMBO. I am assured that it is the right one. We also have Midge repellent clothing as well as some good old Deet based slap-on.

Although it seems a staggering distance we will only need to average 270 miles per day. On our previous trips to the Moroccan and Tunisian Sahara we managed that easily even with the desert driving.

I shall also be using a Gopro HD Hero2, Kodak Playsport and our Iphones to capture video clips both inside and outside the vehicle. I intend to use the K5 for both still and video during the city and museum visits.

Last time I did video I made the mistake of keeping the camera mounted in the same place throughout the trip. Although the terrain changed from road to desert to mountains etc. The 60 hours of footage all through the windscreen was quite tedious. As such I have to edit in plenty of still images to make it interesting. If anyone is interested the result is here
I have since been honing my editing skills and have a far better idea of what to shoot and not shoot. So hopefully the video of this trip will be better.

Thanks for all your ideas and comments I am feeling a bit more reassured now.

Thanks guys.

Avon Skin so soft is already packed

Trollstigen in on the route

It works out at 5500 miles door to same door

As my wife is coeliac we have packed sufficient food for breakfast and evening meal for all 21 days (although Scandinavia is quite good for gluten free food). So food bills will be reduced. We have also packed plenty of wine , ber and spirits to keep the drinks bill down. Now you can see why there isn't much room for camera kit!!

The first 1000 miles will be driven whilst running on free waste vegetable oil (the car has a 190 litre fuel capacity) after that we are at the mercy of Norwegian fuel prices.

Harwich-HoH is an 8 hour crossing. In that time we can be at our first campsite in Belgium with our feet up enjoying a brew. Plus the cost is much higher than the channel crossing.

Maybe you're right about the SD cards. I'll have to see where I can shop locally that does a good deal. WEX is only 25 miles away so it looks like I may have to head there

I can't help thinking that a picture of a squashed midge, even at macro level, will not make it into our album

We're heading off, next Friday, for a 3 week drive to Nordkapp in the Arctic Circle. Our journey will take us through Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland. We shall be camping every night and making visits to several museums en route. We are also hoping to do a whale watching boat trip.

Although we are travelling in a Land Rover Discovery, space is limited so I have to consider carefully what camera equipment to carry. I have narrowed it down to:

K5iis + battery grip (would love a spare body and a sorely tempted by the used K5 in Srs's eBay shop!)
DA 12-24
DA* 16-50
DA* 60-250
Full set of hard and soft edge ND grads and full grads up to +10
Polarisers for each lens size
AF 540 flash
2 Cactus V5 triggers
Velbon Ultrek tripod
24 16Gb SD cards

I've tried to cater for landscapes, interior shots, whale and birds as well as I shall be capturing video as well as stills.

Can anyone suggest any 'essential' or 'nice to have' bit of kit that I've forgotten or would really appreciate having along.

My wife has an Olympus compact and we have 2 iphone 5s if thing go totally wrong

Any suggestions welcome.

Cheers

Ralph

You can't. As soon as the second person joined you'd have to rename the group

2 is upside down.

4 and 9 are the same flags viewed from different sides. In 4 they appear incorrect because you are looking through them from the rear. If the flag is hoisted the thicker part of the whit diagonal should be at the top nearest the pole. If it is not hoisted then it should be in the top left hand corner. Therefore the two flags in 9 are correctly displayed. The only relevance of the holes is when it's hoisted.

The Union Flag is made up from an amalgamation of the St. George's Cross (England), St. Andrews Cross (Scotland) and the St. Patrick's Saltire (Ireland or at least the northern bit). Wales is not included because it is a principality and not a Kingdom.

Oops I see someone else beat me to it