Total waste of time. I hardly ever format cards. Maybe after one has been laying around for several months and I don't remember what camera it was in last, I will make sure all photos have been saved to computer then format it before putting it in my camera or bag.

For that matter, I've accidentally used the same SD card in a Canon P&S, Panasonic Lumix bridge camera, and Sony Alpha 55 dSLR without formatting it and the cameras don't seem to mind my blunder. They just add a sub-directory of their own choosing to store photos in and go on without a complaint.

I really love taking pictures and love all the topics on this site, but I sometimes don't have a clue what is being discussed, not knowing the acronyms, lingo, and, such.
Took a short course at Adult Learning Center but, mainly worked on Photoshop, anyways we have a 2 year course at Community Collage but, not sure about going to school for 2 yrs. I am 46 and don't plan on a career in Photography, just want to really learn it very well. Do you have any suggestions? I do better in a classroom setting verses online, and live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Would consider online or a book if its user friendly.

I've been doing a lot of experimenting lately. Unfortunately, it's caused a problem this morning.

I go to the San Diego Zoo once a week, and that was this morning.

I usually shoot RAW + JPG although I've never done anything with the RAW other than summarily delete them.

I accidentally had my Canon 550D set for RAW only this morning and came home with 158 pictures from a two-hour trip.

I tried opening all of them in Corel PaintShop Pro X4. It crashed.

I tried opening all of them in Photoshop CS5.1. It crashed.

I downloaded Photoshop CS6 Beta and tried opening all of them there. It crashed.

I was able to open all of them very easily in Lightroom 4 and easily export them as JPGs in a batch export process. Took a while though. Certainly says a lot for taking RAW + JPG out in the field.

Anyone else doing something unique or is this just an anomaly that I created for myself this morning?

I got up this morning to a gorgeous foggy sunrise. I grabbed my camera and raced outside and snapped a couple in auto then switched to Manual without remembering I had been reading my Magic lantern book with camera in hand switching settings and taking test pictures. I inadvertently left the iso set to 3200. I shot blissfully unaware until I had them uploaded onto my computer. What a mess. There is no fixing that much noise. To make matters worst I also had forgotten I had switched to RAW. My poor old computer about had a coronary trying to handle those huge files and me with nothing that can process raw.
Well it is a great comparison of what a difference the iso setting can make.

I have a question in reguards to shooting remote flash attached to umbrella. I have to admit my biggest weakness is low light photograghy and I am allways trying different ways of improving. I use a nikon D7000 with a SB900 attached to the hot shoe and had a SB600 attached to a stand and silver lined umbrella, set off to give a different flash no more than 50' at any given time. I was shooting in a ball room low light with about 20' white ceiling and off white walls. The remote flash did not work unless I was within a foot of the remote flash. I have used the set up before without the umbrella and it works fine. Could the silver linning be causing the units not to comunicate with each other? Thanks, LU10IT