Cannot import photos from camera, "problem writing to the volume"

Well I’m glad it’s worked for you on an older PPC machine. Are you sure it’s also true of more recent Intel machines?

My warning still stands.

Regards

TD

I also have the same problem. I have Ricoh camera. It has worked perfectly with previous OS and iPhoto on my iMac. Now I have OS 10.5.6 and iPhoto 09 and the "problem writing to volume" message appears when I go to import photos from the camera.

I have repaired permissions and a whole range of housekeeping tasks. I have 173Gb of free disk space. The same problem appears with my Macbook running the same versions of OS and software.

The Ricoh Caplio Mounter driver (for OS X) allows me to see the camera files in Finder, where I can copy them to a folder on my desktop. I can them drag the desktop files into iPhoto and they appear there without problem.

I did have some movie (AVI) files on the camera but this type has imported previously without problems. They also import from the desktop.

I suspect there is an incompatibility between the Ricoh driver and the latest OS X/iPhoto. However, I have also heard of a USB problems with OS 10.5.6:
http://developer.apple.com/hardwaredrivers/download/usbdebug.html

At least I have a workaround for now.

I'm having the same issue. I was about to completely freak because I just had some problems with two new Maxtor drives and I exchanged them for Seagate FreeAgent drives, and I thought there was a problem with them, too. I was importing images from my Kodak M1033 to my Mac mini (iPhoto Library located on the external HD) and it kept choking. I imported a few at a time until it got down to just two movies it would not bring in. I switched over to Aperture, which brought in all of the pictures and dumped all the movies on my desktop, but it would not bring in the same two movies. I don't know if the problem is with my camera or with iPhoto '09; it would have been nice if it had done like Aperture and just not brought in the malfeasants, but I don't know if there are other problems at work here. I just thought I would give my account of the same problem. I'll try the Image Capture solution next time.

iPhoto will baulk at larger video files and the workaround is to move them to the desktop with Image Capture or the Finder and then import from there.

Regards

TD

I had the same problem since upgrading to '09, and used the same workaround - downloading from the camera with Image Capture, then importing to iPhoto from the HD.

After reading mn_apple's post, I tried formatting the card in my camera. After that, imports seem fine.

I had been trying all kinds of permissions and volume fixes, but it never occurred to me that the issue could be fixed through my camera. So yay mn_apple!

I have had the same problem intermittently. I am a photographer/designer and need my photos NOW! Does anyone have any solutions?

Pheasant

Welcome to the Apple user to user assistance forums

I have had the same problem intermittently. I am a photographer/designer and need my photos NOW! Does anyone have any solutions?

Since you have the same problem then you can use the same solution - make adequate disk space available and do not try to use iPhoto to import large videos

LN

I was receiving the combination of error messages as follows


"Error Downloading image."
"iPhoto cannot import your photos because there was a problem downloading an image"

Also when trying to copy the files in Finder I was getting failure to copy errors there as well
"Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occured. (Error Code -50)"

Using Disk Utility I was able to Repair Disk on the memory card in the camera which fixed the Finder error for copying to the HD but did not resolve iPhoto errors when trying to import directly from the camera.

However copying the files to the HD and then importing to iPhoto did work successfully.

It is a little frustrating to have the entire import fail as the result of possibly only one corrupted file. In the previous version iPhoto might fail to import all photos but would give an error at the end stating some had problems(you could copy the text of this error for reference later to manually deal with the problem files) which seems a much more elegant solution to this kind of issue (especially when you are attempting to import 4GB of files only to find it fails in the end)

One thing I learned from this thread though is the idea of using Image Capture which I hadn't been familiar with before. Thanks.

Cheers,
Brian

Looks like my problem was with the SD card. My camera started to report an intermittent error. I replaced the card and it seems to be working fine now.

I'm getting this same error "iPhoto cannot import your photos because there was a problem downloading an image" What the **** is this? I've restored the phone with no success. When I plug in my camera it thinks it's my iPhone. Has anyone found any real resolution to this?

Okay. I have encountered this error for the first time today (right after an iphoto update). After some tinkering with the files on the camera I realized that the problem could be a corrupted jpg file. Surely enough after searching through and finding 4 corrupted jpg files and deleting them the transfer went through, no more error message. I believe this is a bug with iphoto and corrupted jpg files.

Message was edited by: Ralphdp

I believe this is a bug with iphoto and corrupted jpg files.

Really? It's a bug when an app wont work with a corrupted file?

Regards

TD

Terence Devlin wrote:

I believe this is a bug with iphoto and corrupted jpg files.

Really? It's a bug when an app wont work with a corrupted file?

Regards

TD

Granted maybe I used the wrong terminology but iPhoto 08 never gave me that error when importing corrupted jpg files. So i assumed that maybe there is a bug between that error message and corrupted jpg's and not really anything with the volume.

Whatever, just my two cents.