What causes it
With these cameras, lost photos are rarely a hardware story. They’re usually a routine that went wrong.
- The card was formatted in the camera before the last shoot was copied off.
- The wrong image or folder was deleted while reviewing on the camera’s screen.
- Cards were swapped during a shoot and a full one was reused.
- An import to the computer was interrupted, or looked complete and wasn’t, and the card was cleared afterward.
- The card was pulled or the camera switched off while it was still writing a burst.
What to do right now
- Stop shooting on the card and take it out of the camera.
- If the camera has a second card slot, check that card on a computer. It may hold a copy.
- Check the computer too: the import folder, the import software’s own library, and the trash. A partial import may have more than you think.
- Don’t format either card, and don’t run a repair tool.
- Note whether you shot RAW, JPEG or both, roughly how many frames are missing, and when they were taken.
What’s realistically recoverable
Still photos are the most recoverable thing on a memory card.
Each photo is one file, and cameras usually write it in a single piece, one after another. That holds for bursts as well. So even when the card’s index is gone, the photos can be found by their contents and come back whole.
Each photo also carries its capture date and camera settings inside the file. If the names are lost, the files can still be sorted into shooting order by date.
If you shot RAW and JPEG together, each frame is on the card twice.
A deleted or formatted card from one of these cameras, with nothing shot since, is usually a Standard recovery.
When it isn’t
- Frames that were shot over. If you kept shooting after the format or the delete, the new frames replaced some of the old ones. Those are gone. The rest may be fine.
- Video. Video from these cameras follows the same rules as any long recording. It’s more likely to be stored in pieces and to need rebuilding. See recovered video that won’t play.
- CFexpress and XQD cards. A format or delete on these may be final. See CF, CFexpress and XQD.
- A card that isn’t detected at all. That’s a physical case. Some of these I can do at my bench, quoted after evaluation. The rest I refer out, at no charge.