Trouble importing Nikon nef files into Lightroom Classic

[Stefan26034159flwp]

Hello,

When I import intact original nef-Files into Lightroom Classic about half of the fotos are "disrupted" with only parts intact and the rest of the image filled with different colours (see attached screen shot). Has anyone experienced such problems and found a solution? I am not so keen on converting all of my pictures to other formats such as DNG.

Thank you.

[Jao vdL · Accepted solution]

This typically means that your files are corrupted. This happens either due to issues with the memory card you are using, the USB cable, the card reader, or hard drive issues. You might not see this corruption in other programs such as preview or Nikon's software because they show you the embedded jpeg preview in the raw file which is often not impacted because it is only a very small part of the file.

[Stefan26034159flwp]

Thank you - indeed, it appears the problem occured during the copying to the hard drive. The reminder that only jpeg versions are shown in preview was also useful - that led to some confusion when I saw the defects in the raw files in Lightroom but not in Preview.

[DS256]

See this link for a known problem of how NEF corruption can occur. https://exiftool.org/fix_corrupted_nef.html

[Stefan26034159flwp]

Thank you for the interesting link. I copied the files via a card reader and did not use any Nikon software in the process (should have specified), so  according to the description the utility is probably not the solution to the present problem.

[dj_paige]

See this link for a known problem of how NEF corruption can occur. https://exiftool.org/fix_corrupted_nef.html

By @DS256

This corruption is in the metadata portion of the file. The file corruption shown by the original poster is in the image portion of the file. The two are not the same, and have different causes.