Specialist · photo recovery
Whether you deleted the folder, formatted the card or the camera threw up an error, the frames usually survive until something new is written over them. Here is the honest version: the jobs a free download can manage, the trap where a 50MB RAW comes home as a 5MB preview, and how whole files get rebuilt on the bench. Cards, drives and computers sent in from Exeter are our territory; phones are not.
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| What's wrong | What it usually means | Step one |
|---|---|---|
| Pictures deleted in error | The delete strikes out the index alone; every frame stays put until new data lands on it | Stop shooting on that card |
| A format run in the camera | In-camera formats lay down a fresh file system and rarely touch the image data | Very likely fine — if no new shots followed |
| The screen says ‘Memory card error’ or demands a format | The card’s index has failed; the photographs under it are usually fine | Refuse the format, however insistent it gets |
| Recovery software handed back files that won’t open | Those are embedded previews or part-files, not the real RAW frames | The full-size frames may still be on the card |
| RAW files open with bands, or go grey partway | The frames were stored scattered, or a portion has been written over | One for format-aware rebuilding here |
| The rescued clips won’t play at all | 4K fragments worse than anything else on a card | Rebuilt around the codec’s own structure |
Your device is logged under its own case number the day it arrives. An engineer finds the fault, tells you plainly what stands a real chance of coming back, and writes you one fixed quote. Nothing is charged for that look, nothing obliges you, and paid work starts only when you say so.
First job on the bench is a full sector-by-sector copy. Everything that follows runs on that image; the card or drive you posted never takes another write.
Where the file table survives repair, pictures return exactly as you filed them — names, folders, dates. Where it doesn’t, we carve: every format read to its own grammar, whole RAWs assembled from scattered pieces instead of previews dressed up as a result.
Nothing ships until each recovered picture has been opened at full size and checked by eye. A count in a report proves little; a frame on screen proves the job.
Before any fee falls due you see a full listing of everything recovered and approve it. Your files travel back on brand-new media, return postage on us, and the case stays open until you've confirmed everything opens on your own machine.
What settles most photo cases: how the card was treated after the loss. Put it aside at once and the odds are excellent. Keep shooting and every new frame lands somewhere — often on the very pictures you wanted back. That part is physics, and doing nothing costs nothing.
Free software had churned out 600 files, every one an embedded preview, none printable. The card hadn't been touched since, so a clean image came straight off it; the CR3s went back together from their fragments, and the couple received their gallery at full size — forty frames that tool never saw among them.
Now and then, yes. Free tools cope fine when the files are small, unfragmented JPEGs and the card was set aside at once. RAW and video are where they fall over — fragmented files and embedded previews get served up as recovered when all you really have is thumbnails or fragments. If the shoot matters, clone the card first and check what a real result should look like.
Two common causes. The tool may have lifted just the small JPEG preview embedded in each RAW file, or grabbed only the first piece of a fragmented one. In both cases the full sensor data is often still on the card, and reassembly that understands the format can bring it out — so long as nothing new has been saved over it.
Not often. An in-camera format tends to lay down a new file system and leave the image data untouched underneath. Stop shooting and your chances are strong — every new frame you take lands on top of the pictures you're trying to save.
Phones and tablets are outside what we take on, so no. If the photos have already come off the handset onto a memory card, a drive or a computer, that media is fair game — but the phone itself isn't, and we'd rather tell you before you post it than after.
Each power-up of a failing device takes more data with it. Open a case first — the look-over is free whichever way it goes.