Where have my photos gone?

December 3, 2007 10:28 AM

Last night I took maybe 40-50 photos with my Nikon D70 on a SanDisc 512MB compact flash card. Today the camera was displaying an [-E-] on the LCD even though the card was still in the camera.

When I plugged the card into my PC, there is nothing on the card except the .Trashes folder, ._. Trashes file, and .DS_Store file. I did not format the card or erase any images between taking the photos and now.

I ran PC Inspector File Recovery and CardRecovery v3.60, which turned up photos from October 2005 and April 2007, but nothing from last night.

Where did my photos go? Can I get them back?

posted by rinosaur to technology (8 comments total)

Does it have any built-in memory? Maybe try popping the CF card out and then browsing stored images (if it'll let you).
posted by hjo3 at 10:36 AM on December 3, 2007

This happens often with my D70 if the card isn't firmly seated and the card not formatted before shooting.
posted by luriete at 10:48 AM on December 3, 2007

Building on luriete: did you try taking the card out and putting it back in? It seems possible that it just needs to be 'reseated.'

I've never tried it on external media, but Recuva has saved the day on a hard drive for me, so it might be worth trying.

(The most important bit of advice: don't write anything to the CF card until you get your files off!)
posted by fogster at 11:14 AM on December 3, 2007

Have you shot on that card since April? If so, there's a number of card recovery pieces of shareware out there and most of them will show you what they'd find on the card and don't require reg till you want to actually extract the images. You might want to try some others.

If not that certainly would lend to the idea that the camera never took any pictures last night. It's a setting on the D80 but I dunno about the 70 - will yours take pictures w/o a card in? If so, perhaps the card became unseated and you never got a captured shot last night...
posted by phearlez at 11:44 AM on December 3, 2007

That happens with my D70 sometimes, I take the card out and reinsert and it goes away. Good luck with your photos!
posted by lhall at 12:36 PM on December 3, 2007

Thanks for everyone's help so far!

Yes - the camera has built in memory, but it wasn't being used. I also have the camera set so that it will not take a photo unless the card is in the camera. So I know that whatever photos were taken went on to the card.

I can see that some of the metal prongs in the camera (where the card sits) are bent, so that's at least one mystery solved.
posted by rinosaur at 6:07 PM on December 3, 2007

Those remaining files indicate that the card has been used on a Mac at some point (and can safely be deleted), but that shouldn't affect the ability to use the card on a PC.
posted by pmbuko at 6:42 PM on December 3, 2007

Yes- I have an iBook at home, and a PC at work.
posted by rinosaur at 5:47 AM on December 4, 2007