Stupid, stupid, stupid!

I just accidentally deleted my photos from yesterday's portraits workshop at the 100 year anniversary bash before saving them. What was I thinking? I had been experimenting this morning and decided to delete those by selecting the file on the camera; I am sure the file with the portraits was not selected but nevertheless it has gone. What an idiot. Thinking back I am sure the same thing has happened before but never before saving anything so other than deleting individual photos the system doesn't seem reliable.

You could try a file recovery app like CardRecue, as you often fine that images will still be on the card even after deletion.

The images will be recoverable as long as you haven't saved any more images to the card.

https://www.techradar.com/best/best-free-file-recovery-software

Thanks folks, I am running one programme, fingers crossed!

Well, Recova didn't yield any results. Disk Drill actually recovered all today's photos which I had deleted but not from yesterday; it did offer a deeper scan for a purchase of £83.99 but as reviews are mixed I gave the pro version a miss. EaseUS yielded a couple from today but I couldn't close the programme without clicking a purchase option so it looks very dodgy; I am rebooting the computer and deleting it.

I am sad to lose the photos but they aren't worth taking a gamble on an expensive purchase, however free Disk Drill looks the best by far and it runs a background programme to aid recovery in the future so I am keeping it.

DId you run the Recova in deep scan mode?

Make sure you don't restore anything it does find back onto the same card drive.

Thanks richandfleur, I have just done that, it took ages as it runs on my old Windows computer. It found loads of deleted files but sadly not the ones I wanted; bizarrely the deleted files from earlier and also the ones I took today but unaccountably not from yesterday. Good tip though, worth remembering.

As a final attempt, if all else has failed, you could try formatting the card and then try a recovery program again. That can work.

Oh really? Well I have saved everything else I need so might as well give it a try. I stopped saving to both cards because of buffering issues which meant I was losing shots.

Try 'RePicvid' it's free if you only want to recover photos. It takes quite a while but does find a lot

John’s idea about formatting and then using a recovery programme yielded hundreds of photos dating back to March in .dng, listed helpfully in date order, and a random number as .jpegs. Sadly though not the ones from the 23rd, something very strange must have happened and they were completely obliterated. Never mind, it’s not as if they were of any value or of a unique event; the experience and lessons learned are still with me.

Some interesting lessons though, Disk Drill has proved to be very effective for Apple users and reformatting first yields good results. The JPEGs are weird as I have never used that format although the results are pretty impressive, typically around 4-5 mb, clear and sharp and beautifully rendered so from now on I will save to both formats on the two cards if that doesn’t cause noticeable buffering.

So, thanks again everyone for your help and from now on I will never ever delete whole files without making sure everything worth saving on the card has been copied first!

Are you 100% certain that the 'lost' images were on this card? I'd check any others you have too.

The best of these recovery programs used to be GetDataBack. I've used it to restore whole hard drives with no losses. Not free but the demo should show what's available.

https://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-software.htm

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Yes the file was next to the one I deleted, you can tell by the little pictures on the front of the files but I don't know what happened because only the one file was selected for deletion and that one has been recovered as was the one taken beforehand. I am not computer savvy but I guess either my camera must have a software issue or the card is corrupted in some way. I did check my second card but to no avail.

Thanks, I will give that one a try although as it only runs on Windows I will have to use my old dinosaur so it will take a while!