chippy65 Loc: Cambridge

Chippy update...thank you all for your help............card speed does appear to be part of the problem.

BUT.........following the helpful suggestion about " SD Format" I downloaded & installed on my PC and ran......showed a normal SD card with full capacity which

the D5300 accepted without question.......and also now allowed in camera format !

I think to be safe I may relegate that particular card to my D90

I forgot to remark on the fact that initially the card worked with the D5300 intil it had an outbreak of silliness .....never thought to try it in the D90

while it was in silly mode

chippy65 Loc: Cambridge

Chippy again.......do not understand "format in Camera ! " ? PC format (fast) takes several seconds..... D5300 format is almost instantaneous (so less thorough ?)

PC must be more capable in the CPU department than a camera ! ?.

SD card was Verbatim............showing my age .......Verbatim were "Gold Standard" in the days of "floppy discs" both 5" and 3.5".........still a good make ?

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Depends on the PC. A camera processor is quite potent. Format in camera is often more convienent. Many people use the camera to format the card, to avoid any format issues between Computer OS and camera OS, etc. Personally I think that is probably an urban legend, I have done it both ways with no issues. There was a post here on UHH by Rongo, stating it did not matter and providing some evidence for that. Having said all that, I format the SD in the camera that is using it. There is no harm in that, and the best reason is the card is guaranteeded to be in the camera that way. Not forgotten in the computer.

I don’t know about Verbatim. I have not used their cards. I use Sandisk.

Funny things can happen when the card is too slow. I have a friend who travels a lot and he always carries a Canon SuperZoom. And he buys a new one, same model, every 3-4 years. The latest one he purchased, he was getting a high percentage of out of focus photos. On line there was chatter about the problem. The recommended solution was use a faster SD card. ??? What could it hurt? So he tried it and it made a big difference in the % good. It went from something like 20% to over 80% in focus. Go figure.