Spurious Dark Gray Frames on Z9

[Fishboy1952]

So last week I was out for about 3 hours taking images of the local birds. Nothing obvious occurred with the camera during that timeframe. When I went back and looked at the images at home, out of 685 frames, 4 were a dark gray with no subject at all. This was the first time in 2 years with the Z9 that I’d seen that. All 4 frames were sequential in the middle of the file. The card was a Delkin Black 325 GB card that I’ve been using for about a year. I typically do a quick reformat after every day in the field but haven’t done a full reformat in a while.
So I did a full reformat on the card and thought about reusing it, but after reading a few threads here about card issues I decided to move it to a backup role and installed a new Delkin Black 325 GB. The next day I went out and shot about 1100 images with no issue.
Today I went out and shot about 430 images and found one dark gray frame again in the middle of the images. So obviously not the card. So I just completed saving my settings on the Z9, performed a factory reset, and reloaded my settings. Just checked out the camera in the backyard and for the couple dozen images I shot, everything was normal.
The number of blank frames is certainly a very small percentage of the total, but still worrisome. Just thought I’d check in with others here on the forum as to whether there is anything obvious that I’m missing, or any other actions to take. Thanks.

 

[Cameron T]

You sure you're not hitting the vertical grip shutter while it's pointed down or whatever? I've done that a few times, and it looks like completely grey or whatever when it's pointed at my car door from 3 inches away

 

[John Navitsky]

I was out shooting an event and culling the images there were some frames with a distinct and interesting pattern that it took me a long time to identify. Finally... oh, it's the carpet!

 

[Fishboy1952]

You sure you're not hitting the vertical grip shutter while it's pointed down or whatever? I've done that a few times, and it looks like completely grey or whatever when it's pointed at my car door from 3 inches away

Thanks Cameron. I don’t think that was the cause in this case. Certainly I’ve done that before. Today’s occurrence resulted in only one frame and I have the camera set for 15 fps. I’ve also taken images of my out of focus dashboard but I usually get a string of them. Something to watch out for.

 

[MikeJ]

You sure you're not hitting the vertical grip shutter while it's pointed down or whatever? I've done that a few times, and it looks like completely grey or whatever when it's pointed at my car door from 3 inches away

I've done this, which is why I keep the vertical shutter button locked unless I'm purposefully shooting vertical. Funny that I never had as much of a problem with this with my gripped D500.

 

[Warren D]

Was your "new" card the same batch as the original one? Delkin recommends a deep format, instructions are on their website but it basically involves a re-format on a computer. I had trouble with a Delkin Black 325 earlier this year, purchased just about 1 year ago now. I'm not sure if there is a bad batch of controllers or some other internal or if it's a firmware/architecture conflict with the Z9 and FW 5.0. I'd run the deep re-format and test and if it's still not right, contact Delkin for replacements.

 

[Fishboy1952]

Was your "new" card the same batch as the original one? Delkin recommends a deep format, instructions are on their website but it basically involves a re-format on a computer. I had trouble with a Delkin Black 325 earlier this year, purchased just about 1 year ago now. I'm not sure if there is a bad batch of controllers or some other internal or if it's a firmware/architecture conflict with the Z9 and FW 5.0. I'd run the deep re-format and test and if it's still not right, contact Delkin for replacements.

Thanks Warren. I’m pretty sure I purchased both of those cards at the same time. I’ll check the Delkin website. Thanks for the feedback!

 

[Warren D]

Supposedly, the deep re-format maps out any bad sectors. While a few bad sectors aren't a big concern, each mapping reduces the capacity of the card and that is a concern. Flash memory has a limited number of read/write cycles. In the case of my bad 325 Black card, it was a primary card and had more use than others. That still isn't a valid reason for a failure in under a year of use especially when said use is only on weekends (less than 100 cycles).

 

[Fishboy1952]

Supposedly, the deep re-format maps out any bad sectors. While a few bad sectors aren't a big concern, each mapping reduces the capacity of the card and that is a concern. Flash memory has a limited number of read/write cycles. In the case of my bad 325 Black card, it was a primary card and had more use than others. That still isn't a valid reason for a failure in under a year of use especially when said use is only on weekends (less than 100 cycles).

Well, from what I see from Delkin, the deep reformatting is only possible on a PC, which eliminates me as I’m a Mac user. I will give them a call and see what they recommend.