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Photos in Camera Roll are just black

I've noticed since the update that Camera Roll is now blacking out videos and pictures on my iPhone. When I go into the roll on the iPhone the place where pictures for wallpapers or pictures of nature or friends have no been replaced with just a black box. Now tapping the box to bring the picture full screen doesn't fix the problem. It just shows up black as well. I've tried pulling those pictures from the iPhone to my PC and again same deal. I've lost a ton of photos. I also noticed this isn't just a problem my 3GS is experiencing since the update. The iPhone 4 that was located in my local at&t store was also doing the same thing. Blacking out pictures that people had taken with the phone. Anyone have an idea on what this is or how to fix it?

HP Pavillion, Windows 7, iPhone 3GS with iOS 4.0

Posted on Jul 12, 2010 9:45 PM

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Posted on Jul 15, 2010 7:31 AM

This has been happening more and more frequently to me too. I don't sync my photos via iTunes, I import them directly into iPhoto. Recently photos have been 'blacking out' in pairs next to each other....
53 replies

Jul 16, 2010 8:13 PM in response to Mark Adley

I just fixed the problem... It's all about the new multi-tasking feature. The files are synced correctly, however you need to close the running album app by double-clicking the home button, holding the app's icon a few seconds and then hitting the red X button. Then when you go into the photo album, the pictures show up correctly!

Hope this helps

Jul 17, 2010 5:18 PM in response to _Habakuk_

Ouch. You're the first person I've heard of who couldn't get rid of the black boxes with a reboot. Seems I shouldn't have said "always works".

Well, I guess the next drastic measure is to move all the original images out of their folder to some Temp folder. Sync the iPhone again - which will delete the images in the cache. Then, copy them back to their original folder and sync again. Hope this works.

By the way, I am assuming that at one point, your images looked normal. Then, you did a rename or delete, and that's when you first saw the black boxes. Is that correct?

Message was edited by: LV_Bill

Jul 17, 2010 5:59 PM in response to LV_Bill

@ Bill

I'm having the same problem after I made the mistake of updating my 3G today. About 20 of 200 pictures are black in thumbnail. I can't actually get my phone to do a hard reset. When I hold both buttons the slide to turn off screen comes up after a few seconds and then it just goes to black after a few more seconds as if I turned it off normally. When I bring it back I have the same problem. I refuse to do that work around because I hope they will fix it eventually and it seems like more work than its worth.
Any idea why I can't seem to get it to do a hard reset?

Jul 20, 2010 6:30 AM in response to Monty1945

Deleting all the photos does nothing to fix the problem. I used ImageCapture to download the photos to my Mac, deleting them in the process. The problem returns as soon as you take more photos.

To be clear, this affects my phone although I do NOT sync photos (like some have), I do NOT use iPhoto. I simply use the camera as a stand-alone thing, and copy photos when I need to via ImageCapture.

I could like with the black boxes except I notice this also causes Photos to hang up, and slows the launch of Camera, causing me to lose many photo opportunities (which is one reason I upgraded to the 4)

Jul 13, 2010 8:29 AM in response to Dave Hutch

This problem only exits in camera roll when deleting pictures from the pc download program. However, it exists if I deleted pictures on the pc from other albums that I sync. It can be solved by sincing one more time, but this is a problem that Apple needs to fix in iOS4. It is a real pain to have to sync twice to get all the albums with the pictures you want. I have not had the problem if I delete pictures from the iphone.

Jul 17, 2010 4:56 PM in response to LV_Bill

Thanks for your hint, Bill.

Sorry. I tried that (holding the home button and the power button at the same time for about 10 seconds until the Apple logo shows up then releasing the buttons and waiting some minutes for start screen) several times starting the procedure from camera roll app or from homescreen ==> nada. The problem with black thumbnails (approx. 30 out of 360—some at the end and some at the beginning of the roll pls. have a look at the screenshot that I've posted before) remains.

And I can't "kill" any "task" because my iPhone 3G has no multitasking.

Photos in Camera Roll are just black

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