It took me the better part of a day and half to get those pictures to come back to life. Actually, two and a half days…given that no one who could help me could be reached on Sunday. Here are a few of them:

I finally tracked down the wonderful people at Sandisk, which distributes Image DoctorPro and Dave Dabny at LCTechnology, which created Image DoctorPro. They also make an even more comprehensive program that can also deal with lost photos on hard drives called Photorecovery. Both programs were able to read the image files on the “lost cards”, but Dave was able to let me download a full working copy. The stand-in person at SanDisk was only able to mail a copy on a card. I’ll be doing a blog on Sandisk's Image Doctor Pro on the site I share with another ace photographer, Doug Sahlin, at www.accessdigitalphotography.com, but don’t expect to find it for a few weeks.

Here are a few of the squatter shacks I was able to recover:

Obviously, the program works quite well. It takes some time, even on a fast computer, to sort through all the bits and pieces of data and to put them back together, but the user interface is quite easy and intuitive. You pick the drive letter that’s your card and click Start Scan and go to lunch or work on your laptop. Actually, you could be rescuing another card on another computer…if you have one. Here’s what the Photorecovery interface looks like.

Unfortunately, no one can absolutely guarantee that they’ll be able to recover lost pictures no matter what. The chances of having your cards corrupted are small, but don’t risk your career or your clients.

First of all, don’t physically loose the cards. Make sure you put the cards back in their little plastic boxes before you put them away. Then put them into an insulated pouch that’s different from the one that holds cards that haven’t been shot. Don’t put it into your camera bag…it’s the thing you’re carrying that’s most likely to get stolen. Put them into a buttoned pocket where pickpockets can’t get to them without obviously annoying you.

More importantly, certain things you can do will minimize the chances you’ll corrupt your card. Dave Dabny at LC, suggests you make sure you Do and Don’t do the following:

DON'T:

Delete any pictures in the camera…especially not after the card fills up.

Put any more pictures onto one card than you’d care to loose for the day. Having a lot of cards, especially at today’s prices, is a lot cheaper than loosing any shoot.

Let the camera Auto rotate the image when you turn the camera vertical or horizontal. Most cameras let you turn that option off, but you’ll have to check your camera’s manual.

In camera red eye reduction has to re-write parts of the file. It’s far safer to do that on your computer to a backup of the image.

Don’t let the camera determine white balance. Again, it has to re-write the file after it’s been shot.

Change the size of the picture in any way in camera. That can cause data to be written somewhere else, so the files can get fragmented.

Don’t put the card in another camera unless the other camera formats it.

Don’t put it in your MP3 player…or any other device.

DO:

Format all the cards you’re going to use on a shoot in the camera they’re going to be shot in and do it right before you start shooting with that card. In case you don’t have time, also format all your cards just before leaving for your shoot or right after you arrive.

Always format the cards in the camera, not in the computer.

One more thing worth noting: Most recovery software will rename the files it recovers and will often convert an unknown RAW format to TIFF (don’t worry, it’s still RAW and still has all the metadata). For that reason, I save all the rescued files into a folder that hasn’t yet been imported into Lightroom. Then, when I import, I have Lightroom add the name of the camera and shoot (or subject, if you’re rescuing multiple shoots) and a unique letter code to the file name. That way, you won’t have duplicate file names if you have to rescue a large number of files.

Also, you can usually rename the TIFFs to whatever the original file format name was, but make sure it works before you delete the original file. Actually, I back up all the original files to a DVD or two and then erase them from my hard drive so that that Recovery folder is always ready for the next rescue. If you’re rescuing several cards, be sure to do that immediately after rescuing each card. Otherwise one rescue is likely to overwrite the next. Else, be sure you change the name of the folder you’re saving to.