It’s one of the enduring mysteries of our times.
Why does Fuji want to render your card unusable in other cameras?
As someone with a lot of cameras can attest, the dreaded “card full” message can pop up a lot.
But the card isn’t full, so what’s going on?
The answer is that it merely contains a folder from one of my Fujifilm mirrorless cameras. This one folder is enough to send all the other cameras on the market into a tailspin.
999_FUJI
For some reason Fuji insists on creating a folder called 999_FUJI on cards that have any other folders.
My Nikon D850 might have placed “135ND850” on the card. My Leica may have put a “101LEICA” folder in there. My Sony usually starts with a folder called “100MSDCF”.
Fuji for some reason rides a horse and cart through the folder numbering scheme and will often start at 999, which is for some only the camera industry standards people understand, means no further folders can be added afterwards.
So the card is rendered unusable until you format it completely or rename the 999_FUJI folder. Most people will just format it especially if they’re in a rush to shoot, as they won’t be aware of the 999_FUJI folder being the cause of the problem.
It’s all a bit stupid
Of course it is high time the camera industry stopped with it’s silly folder nonsense.
My Canons seem to think it’s ok to plonk files in a folder named by my Sony.
And my Fuji seems to be adverse to starting at 100.
All my cameras without exception stop working at 999.
And my Sony A1 still stores video in two sub folders within a folder called PRIVATE like in the AVCHD days 10 years ago.
It’s all nonsense in an era of smartphones which store photos and videos in sensible ways, like in the cloud.
If only I could have all the lost shots and all the days spent formatting cards back because of Fujifilm.
They owe me big time.
