I had an opportunity to go out to the annual Patch Party out by Red Lake on Carson Pass for one night this week. After setting up my tent and indulging in a tasty beverage, Chocorua, my dog, and myself head out to the closest, highest peak. Kyle Schwartz grabbed his camera and joined in the hike and photo opportunity. Once we made it to the top, I took this photo of Chocorua. She's a real sweetheart and my first non-human love. I, in fact, hated dogs due to a couple incidents around my block where I grew up that involved a mean German Sheppard and a vicious Doberman Pincher, but I digress. When we got Chocorua, she won my heart over.
When I was composing this photograph, I was thinking about how much I loved her and how sad I would be when she passes away and I was feeling that the star coming through her legs from the sunset behind was her heart shining. I then told myself not to erase the images and immediately went to the menu, scrolled down to FORMAT and pressed ok. DOH! Seriously, what the hell was that all about? Anyways, I took the card out and set it aside. The sunset was really nice and I just went into shooting it. The whole time, I was bummed though, because, I had a real emotional attachment to the experience and it was getting to me.
When I got home the next day, I took the formatted card and put it into my card reader, of course, there was nothing on it. So I opened a program called FileSalvage which is meant to recover deleted files. This file, was not only deleted, but formatted as well. I let the program do it's thing, and it recovered my files no problem, not only the ones that I had taken this day, but many shoots ago. Needless to say, I was relieved and excited. I just wanted to share this with any photographers who have accidentally done this, which is most of us.
Follow these steps:
1. after erasing the images, do not shoot anymore photos on that card
2. plug the card into a card reader
3. open filesalvage, assuming you have it, or have just downloaded it ($79.95, not cheap, but this photo is priceless to me, so it's worth every penny, plus).
4. recover your files.
When I was composing this photograph, I was thinking about how much I loved her and how sad I would be when she passes away and I was feeling that the star coming through her legs from the sunset behind was her heart shining. I then told myself not to erase the images and immediately went to the menu, scrolled down to FORMAT and pressed ok. DOH! Seriously, what the hell was that all about? Anyways, I took the card out and set it aside. The sunset was really nice and I just went into shooting it. The whole time, I was bummed though, because, I had a real emotional attachment to the experience and it was getting to me.
When I got home the next day, I took the formatted card and put it into my card reader, of course, there was nothing on it. So I opened a program called FileSalvage which is meant to recover deleted files. This file, was not only deleted, but formatted as well. I let the program do it's thing, and it recovered my files no problem, not only the ones that I had taken this day, but many shoots ago. Needless to say, I was relieved and excited. I just wanted to share this with any photographers who have accidentally done this, which is most of us.
Follow these steps:
1. after erasing the images, do not shoot anymore photos on that card
2. plug the card into a card reader
3. open filesalvage, assuming you have it, or have just downloaded it ($79.95, not cheap, but this photo is priceless to me, so it's worth every penny, plus).
4. recover your files.
I've done very similar mistakes, used SanDisk Rescue Pro ($0.00), and always gotten my files back. They a recovered as TIFFs, but still got them.
Posted by: robbie | June 29, 2009 at 06:40 PM
Nice Robbie, I had this program already and it recovers the files as RAW. The reason I had to buy this program was because I erased a big money job off a computer a couple years ago and it did the trick...thank goodness.
Posted by: Tim Peare | June 29, 2009 at 08:31 PM