iPhone Photo Limit? (8GB)

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Level 1

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iPhone Photo Limit? (8GB)

I just returned from a 2 week vacation with 711 photos on my iPhone. Yes I know it's a lot, but I wanted to see when it would max out... and it didn't!

Before I left, when I would Sync my iPhone both iTunes & iPhoto would launch. Now with 711 photos on my iPhone, iPhoto seems to have choked and says, "There are no items to import!"

Does anyone know if there's an import limit for photos from iPHONE to iPhoto?

I'd hate to lose my photos so post any suggestions.
Other than that, a few other glitches aside, the iPhone's been great!

G4 Quicksilver, Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Posted on Jul 30, 2007 10:19 PM

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Answer 1

Damon M.

Level 4

3,705 points

Jul 31, 2007 4:06 PM in response to Jayman71

There is not a limit on the number of photos that iphoto will import from the iphone.

Also, the number of photos that the iphone will store is quite large depending on how much free space you have on the iphone. The camera on the iphone is a 2 megapixel camera.

The average stats for a 2 megapixel camera is:
image size (1,600 x 1,200)
File size: 0.9MB (900 kb)

So, if you have half of your space free on the iphone, that is quite a few pictures you can take.

Now, as for getting the photos off your iphone, iphoto should work fine. However, if iphoto has issues with pulling all the photos off (which it should not) you can use image capture and download all the photos to a folder and then import them into iphoto.

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Answer 2

Jayman71 Author

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Jul 31, 2007 5:06 PM in response to Damon M.

Hi Damon,

That's how it should work and it has in the past, except now it's not.
I tried iPhoto, Image Capture, and Aperture all with the same results...

"There are no items to import"

All 3 programs don't see the 711 photos on my iPhone and everything else syncs fine. Gonna head in to my local Apple Store and see what their Genius can figure out. I'll post the outcome if he/she can fix it. Thanks!

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Answer 3

Jul 31, 2007 7:21 PM in response to Jayman71

I have run into the same problem with my 8GB iPhone with only 436 photos. iPhoto, Aperture and Image Capture will not recognize any of the photos that I have on my iPhone. iTunes is also a little confused, it thinks that I have only 300 MB of total storage on my iPhone. (265 MB available for storage)

Nathan

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Answer 4

dylanks

Level 1

9 points

Aug 7, 2007 1:03 AM in response to Jayman71

Same problem here, with only 138 photos.

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Answer 5

Jayman71 Author

Level 1

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Aug 7, 2007 6:10 PM in response to dylanks

UPDATE | FINALLY GOT MY PHOTOS SYNCED w/ iPHOTO

So I went into my local Apple Store (Emeryville, CA) and spent 2 hrs there working my way up the "Genius Bar" staff ladder and by the end all they could do is raise their arms in befudlement. The only suggestion they did offer was "RESTORE" your iPhone and start over. That's not a solution in my book!

So I went home and made sure I Updated my iPhone, iTunes, & iPhoto software. Once everything was up to date, my iPhone was still not Syncing with iPhoto!@#$%

THIS IS WHAT I DID THAT WORKED (only once):
1. Updated all my apps
2. Powered Off my iPhone
3. Powered Off my G4 "Quicksilver" Desktop
4. With the iPhone still in the Cradle and connected to my Desktop I booted up my computer.
5. Because the iPhone was still in the Cradle my Desktop powered it back on so now both devices booted at the same time.
6. As soon as my Desktop finished booting up, iTunes & iPhoto both launched and both apps recognized my iPhone!
7. Realizing that this Sync recognition may not occur again, I quickly Sync'd my iPhone photos over to iPhoto. I DID NOT CHECK DELETE PHOTOS AFTER SYNC and transferred 711 photos.
8. Once I transferred and verified my photos. I tried to replicate my actions, but could not Sync w/ iPhoto again. It must have been a fluke of some sort, but at least I got my photos off!

Here's where things got interesting...
Still convinced that there must be some sort of photo limit for Syncing between iPhone & iPhoto I started DELETING my photos from the iPhone 25 at a time (from 711) and putting the iPhone into the Cradle to try and Sync.

It wasn't until I got down to 575 photos that iPhoto recognized my iPhone as having photos and when I pressed the SYNC button it only transferred 573. Once I transferred those 573 without deleting them from the iPhone, iPhoto recognized that the iPhone had photos on it everytime! Could this be the limit? Only Apple knows for sure.

I hope this process helps some of you out there!

Cheers and happy iPhoning!

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Answer 6

Damon M.

Level 4

3,705 points

Aug 9, 2007 12:30 PM in response to Jayman71

Here is an article from the apple support website that might help.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=305835

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Answer 7

dylanks

Level 1

9 points

Aug 9, 2007 4:46 PM in response to Damon M.

Wow, that's a much simpler resolution, and does seem to be the issue for me at least. Thanks Damon.

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Answer 8

dylanks

Level 1

9 points

Aug 9, 2007 5:00 PM in response to dylanks

Well, it sort of works... I find that if I don't delete them from the camera, it tries to import them all again. If I tell iPhoto to skip the duplicates, it sits on the first photo until the phone locks itself again.

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Answer 9

gmpotter

Level 1

0 points

Aug 12, 2007 8:22 AM in response to Jayman71

I had the same problem with 900+ photos on my daughters phone. I checked the support link mentioned in this thread and it didn't help. She doesn't use a passcode. What did work was connecting to a Windows PC running XP. The phone was identified as a USB device and I was able to copy all of the photos to a windows share that I could access from my Mac. Once the pictures were safe I tried some experimenting. I deleted 10 photos at a time and tried re-connecting to the Mac to see if it would be recognized. I then went up to 25 photos at a time, and finally 100. When I got down to 300 photos It was again recognized by iPhoto. I asked my daughter to take some pictures and connect to the mac to see when it stopped being recognized again. She reported that around 325 or so it stopped again. I hate to have to resort to Windows to solve an apple problem, but it was better than losing all of those vacation pictures.

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Answer 10

Sep 24, 2007 11:58 AM in response to gmpotter

you are totally right. this happened to me and i thought my pictures were toast. luckily i was able to erase many duplicates and badly taken fotos (i just snapped like crazy and hoped for the best, so there were lots of knees, ears and fingers in my pictures). i brought the number down from 344 photos to 268 and iPhoto finally launched and recognized my iPhone normally.

this is definitely a bug, and you're porbably spot on, 325 seems to be the magic number.

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Answer 11

Sep 24, 2007 12:02 PM in response to Damon M.

well, i had 344 pictures on my phone and iPhone totally ignored it.

I tried the repair-permissions, and sudo periodic stuff and nothing happened.

Restarted a few more times... nothing.

I erased a few pictures, brought it down to 280-something and iPhoto then behaved normally.

this guy below is right:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5114364#5114364

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