How to fix the Fujifilm ‘Frame No. Full’ Error Message
Not nearly a new subject, but one that we have not covered here, the otherwise completely amazing user interface* of Fujifilm cameras has this one (just one) fatal flaw where if the frame counter gets to 9,999 it is unable to shoot even one more image, no matter what fleeting moment you’re about to miss. (*deplorable user interface compared to everyone but Sony, a critical drawback of otherwise competent gear)
Simply put, the camera cannot track frames into 5-digits and the camera will literally arrest any ability to shoot once it has gotten to this termination point, as our shipping manager noted, a Y2K sort of data problem… an excusable issue in the early days of computer code, but not so much now.
I encountered this myself just last week and realized that many of the owners of the GFX-series cameras we have sold and support may not know to look out for this coming up as their cameras age in shot count and how to fix it.
The issue is easy to fix if you have a media card you don’t mind formatting, so it would be best to be proactive on this if you are above 8,500 frames on your camera now.
The shot count reset procedure:
• Insert a media card that you’re able to format, or a card that does not have any Fujifilm folders or files currently on it
• Navigate through the menu system to SAVE DATA SET-UP and then FRAME NO.
• Select RENEW
• If you inserted a card with data on it, back out of these menus and then navigate to the only reasonable place in any camera user interface ever designed to access card formatting, USER SETTING. (again, the amazing UI)
• Format the card:
• Fire one frame.
Now, circle back to SAVE DATA SET-UP and then FRAME NO. and switch it back to CONTINUOUS unless you’d like to record endlessly repeating frame numbers from session to session of shooting.
You will now have reset frame counter, good for the next 9,999 images
Addendum: The Plot Thickens (like spoiled gravy)
I thought I was done writing this little informational piece, but I wanted to know for myself how we were getting to these frame counts on these cameras that haven’t necessarily even shot 10,000 frames.
I found a wide amount of discussion out on the forums why this error would present itself unless you were somewhere close to 9 million captures if there 899 folders with 9,999 captures available, and I honestly don’t know the answer to that. The above image indicates that my pretty lightly used GFX 100S-II was getting close to the cutoff threshold and I hit that threshold with my GFX 100-II just two weeks prior.
As a further complication to logic, I ejected the same SD card used above that produced the 0001 & 0002 files in the 100_FUJI folder, formatted it, placed it in another 100S-II body (with clock set to Alaskan time) fired a frame and then placed the card directly back in the original camera and it produced another 999_FUJI folder with an image counting at 9743. (wait what?!)
I formatted the card again, shot another frame and indeed, we are still counting up in the 9,700’s with my next frame indicating 9,744.
It was the end of the day and frustrated with the ground shifting under me, I quit testing for the day and formulated a more rigorous and controlled test.
I cycled the same SD card between four cameras:
• 1st Pass – One frame shot on the card, image imported into the computer, card wiped
• 2nd Pass – I moved the card between all four cameras, firing one frame each
• 3rd Pass – I erased the card, did the RENEW procedure on each camera and fired one frame each, clearing the card before going into each camera
• 4th Pass – I moved the card from each camera to the next, not erasing it.
So, nothing jumped crazily through all of these tests, each camera was producing files into the 100_Fuji folder within the DCIM folder and even though the 3rd camera fired should have on its own been on frame #2, shot at frame #4 which makes sense, as the camera would not return a sequence number lower than what was already on the card.
I continued to migrate the same card through the four cameras with increasing amount of frames shot per body.
Since one of the four cameras was shooting a _DSF naming convention compared to the other three shooting _DSCF conventions, it offered a greater insight of what migrating a single media card through multiple cameras would result in.
Notice that 157 files were shot with this camera, but the sequence number jumped up based on frames fired on the other three cameras so that there was a range of 1 – 618, representing the amount of files all four cameras shot.
So the takeaway from this, is that if you use the same media card with any recent files still intact from a camera that has 8000 frames shot on it and insert it into a brand new body, that brand new body will start recording a 8001 sequence.
I figure that some of my cameras might have been subject to this leapfrogging, perhaps by client cards that had existing files on them, but that’s hard to say. In the case of this camera, the frame count before I renewed it was 9,706 (which was in the 999_FUJI folder):
The lovely Fujifilm X App for iOS tells me exactly how many frames have been fired on this camrea and it’s nowhere near 9,700 frames. Oh well, I’ll continue to investigate to determine the rhyme and reason of this, but in the meantime, I’ve got some firmware to update. (Kudos to whoever is on the iOS team for Fujifilm, it’s a really great app. Maybe we can get them to revise the UI on the bodies too!)
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