Specialist work · photographs
Whether the folder was deleted, the card formatted in the body, or the camera now refuses to read it at all, the frames usually remain where they were written until something new is laid over them. Here is the honest position, before you post a card in from Maidenhead: the jobs free software can genuinely finish, why a 50MB RAW so often returns as a 5MB preview, and the method used here to rebuild whole files. Cards, drives and computers only — never phones.
Describe the fault to an engineer
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| The symptom | The likely cause | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Pictures deleted by mistake | A delete edits the index and nothing else; the frame itself remains where it was until it is overwritten | Stop using the card now |
| Formatted in the camera body | The body lays down a fresh file system; in most cases the images below it are left untouched | Promising, so long as you shot nothing further |
| ‘Memory card error’, or the body asking to format | The card’s index has been damaged; the frames underneath usually have not | Decline the format, no matter how often asked |
| Recovered files that no program will open | What came back are previews or fragments, not whole RAW frames | The complete frames are quite likely still present |
| Banding across a RAW, or grey from halfway down | The frame was split across the card, or partly overwritten | Rebuilding to the format’s own rules |
| Recovered clips that will not play | Nothing fragments across a card like 4K video | Rejoined in the order the codec expects |
Nothing becomes chargeable until you have said yes to it. Each item takes a case number of its own the moment it arrives, an engineer establishes what has actually failed, and you are given a candid view of which files stand a realistic chance of returning. The single quote that follows is fixed, written down, and costs nothing.
The first thing on the bench is a complete image of every sector. Everything after that runs against the copy, so your original media is read from and never altered.
Where the index can be repaired, the pictures return arranged as you left them — filenames, folders and dates intact. Where it cannot, carving takes over: each format read against its own specification, and whole RAW frames stitched from fragments rather than previews dressed up as results.
No files leave here until each recovered frame has been opened at its full size and inspected by eye. Totals in a report prove very little; what proves the job is the photograph itself, up on a monitor.
Nothing is billed until you have seen the recovered file list in full and told us to go ahead. What comes back arrives on new media, with the return journey at our cost, and the case stays open at this end until you have opened every file yourself.
Nearly every photo case hinges on one detail: what the card was asked to do next. Put it away immediately and the odds sit strongly in your favour. Keep shooting and each fresh frame has to be written somewhere, quite possibly over the ones you want back. Stopping is free; the alternative is not.
Six hundred files, and not one fit to print: the free software had saved only the embedded previews. The card had been left alone since, so it imaged cleanly, and the CR3 originals were reassembled a fragment at a time. The gallery went home at full size, forty frames longer than that tool had managed.
Occasionally. Where a card was put away as soon as the trouble appeared, free tools manage small, unfragmented JPEGs well enough. RAW and video are another matter: fragments and embedded previews get reported as recoveries when all you are holding is a thumbnail or an opening scrap. Where the pictures matter, take a full image of the card first, and set a clear idea of what a genuine result ought to look like.
There are two common causes. Either the tool lifted nothing but the small embedded JPEG out of each RAW, or it captured only the first fragment of a file that had been split across the card. In both cases the sensor data itself is often untouched, and a rebuild carried out against the format’s specification will retrieve it, so long as nothing has since been written over it.
Rarely. A format carried out in the body lays down a new file system while the frames themselves stay exactly where they were. Set the camera aside and the prospects are good; every further exposure you take reduces them.
We cannot help there. Handsets and tablets fall outside our work entirely. Once the pictures have been copied off onto a card, a spare drive or a computer, that media is welcome here; the handset is not, and better to know that before you post anything.
Each further power-up asks more of a drive that has already begun to fail. Open the case first and let the free diagnosis tell you what is left.