Even though I keep my SD cards in a pocket made for SD cards, IN my camera bag…I managed to shoot a session with one that had something stuck on the gold pins and only 1 out of the 450 photos aren’t corrupt. During the session I was able to show the clients some back of camera shots, so I’m thoroughly confused. We gently cleaned it off, photos that I took AFTER the cleaning are showing up but no free recovery software is able to get the images from my session to show up. The files are “there”, both NEF and jpeg but when I click them, it says it can’t read them. I’ve tried viewing them on my camera, my desktop, and with a card reader. I’ve already done check disk in commands and I’ve done the check through the properties and both yielded no results. Am I screwed or would a paid software be able to get these files to open?
I wouldn’t give up on the photos just yet. If the NEF and JPEG files are still showing on the card, there’s a chance the actual image data can still be recovered.
At this point, though, I’d stop using the card and definitely avoid formatting it or running CHKDSK again. Those things can sometimes make recovery harder.
I’d try a proper recovery tool, like Stellar Photo Recovery, that can recover RAW/NEF files, mainly one that lets you create an image of the SD card and recover from that copy. Free tools can sometimes find the files but not reconstruct them properly.
