Specialist · recovering photographs
Deleted, formatted, or the camera reporting an error — usually the pictures are still on the card until fresh data lands on top of them. What follows is a straight account: where free tools genuinely work, where they hand back a 5MB preview instead of a 50MB RAW, and how the full frames get retrieved here. Cards, drives and computers only; phones we do not touch.
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| The problem | What that tells you | First step |
|---|---|---|
| Shots erased off the card | Only the directory entries vanished; the pictures stay whole until overwritten | Take no more photos with it |
| Formatted by the camera itself | A camera format usually wipes only the file system, not the pictures | Good odds, provided nothing was shot since |
| ‘Memory card error’, or a demand to format | A broken allocation table sitting above sound images | Don’t format it to clear the message |
| A free tool returned files that open into nothing | What it saved were the built-in previews, or opening fragments — not whole RAWs | Complete frames could still be sitting there |
| RAWs load with stripes, or half the frame grey | Frames split into pieces, or partly written over | A job for bench reassembly |
| Nothing plays back from the recovered clips | 4K breaks into many pieces; no carve is harder | Rebuilt with the frame structure understood |
As soon as it lands with us, your device gets its own case number. An engineer works out the fault, says what can genuinely be pulled off, then puts one fixed price in writing — no charge for diagnosis, no obligation, and no chargeable work until you approve it.
A sector-level image is taken before anything else, and all work — ours included — happens on that copy. The original you sent is never written to.
Where the index survives, pictures return under their own names, folders and dates. Where it has gone, each frame is carved by its own format’s rules — complete RAWs rebuilt from scattered pieces, not previews passed off as results.
Every recovered shoot is opened and looked at, picture by picture, at full size. A file count proves nothing; an image that opens proves everything.
You sign off a complete list of the recovered files first; only then does the recovery fee fall due. Everything returns on fresh media, postage paid, and the job stays open until you confirm the files open at your end.
The one thing that decides the outcome: what happened to the card between the loss and the post. Put it straight in a drawer and almost everything comes back. Carry on shooting ‘for a minute’ and you lose precisely the frames the new pictures settled on. Physics decides that part, and the discipline costs nothing.
A free tool had produced 600 files — every one a preview, none fit to print. The card itself was untouched since, so it imaged cleanly; the CR3s rebuilt from fragments, and the couple's gallery went out at full resolution — including the forty frames that tool missed entirely.
Sometimes. On small JPEGs that aren't fragmented, on a card you put away straight after, free software really does the job. It comes undone on RAW and video: fragmentation and embedded previews leave you with part-files or thumbnails presented as wins. If the shoot matters, take a clone first and learn what a genuine result looks like.
Usually one of two things: the software pulled only the JPEG preview held inside the RAW file, or it caught the opening fragment of a file stored in pieces. Either way, the complete sensor data may still be sitting on the card, and format-aware reassembly can retrieve it, provided nothing has written over it.
Rarely. A format in the camera generally rewrites the file system while leaving the picture data where it was. Shoot nothing more and the odds are very good; each fresh photo you take settles on top of the old ones.
No — phones and tablets are outside what we do, full stop. Once photos have been copied from a handset onto a card, drive or computer, we can work on them; the handset itself is out, and it is better you know now than after posting it to us.
Powering a damaged device up again costs you data. Start a case first; diagnosis is free whatever you decide.