That is quite a rig! Fabulous result at microscopic scale, any idea of the magnification?

Got a balloon if you are interested.

And there was me expecting a leggy model! Nice shot, it’s always fascinating to see the creatures populating your part of the world, please keep them coming.

Well I for one enjoyed the fizzy drink and a bit of the cake later, and the generous buffet was excellent too. Luckily I remained sober enough not to throw caution and my credit card to the wind back in the shop!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.