Cameras and phones remove the catalogue entry and leave the image data sitting on the card. The photo is recoverable right up until something writes over it — which on a camera means the next shot you take. A partial example: a shoot overwritten on a microSD.
The single most damaging thing after deleting photos is continuing to shoot. Each new frame is written into space the deleted images occupied, and a burst can overwrite dozens of them in seconds.
Even when the file system is gone, photographs are unusually recoverable because they begin with distinctive byte patterns — JPEG has a fixed header and footer, and RAW formats like CR2, NEF and ARW have their own recognisable structures. Recovery software and lab tools scan the raw card for these signatures and reconstruct the file from the pattern outward, without needing the directory at all. That technique is called carving, and it works on a formatted card just as well as a deleted one.
What it loses is the filename and folder structure, since those lived in the catalogue rather than the image. Recovered photos usually come back correctly but named sequentially, which is a small price.
The phone’s own trash. iOS Photos keeps deleted items for 30 days in Recently Deleted; Google Photos and Samsung Gallery do the same. An alarming number of “lost” photos are sitting there. Cloud backups. iCloud Photos, Google Photos and OneDrive may already hold the image even if the phone does not — check the web interface rather than the app, which sometimes hides what the account still holds. A second card or an old backup drive, if the images were ever offloaded.
All three are free and none of them risk anything. Exhaust them before running software.
A quick format leaves the images intact and is very recoverable. A full or low-level format writes across the whole card and generally is not. Continuing to shoot is the commonest cause of partial recovery — the photos that come back are the ones nothing landed on.
Phones are harder than cameras. Internal phone storage is usually encrypted and not presented as a removable disk, so it cannot be imaged the way a card can. If the photos were on the phone rather than a card, the realistic routes are the trash folder and cloud backup rather than a recovery lab. Photos on a memory card are a much better proposition.
Memory cards and USB media are from £250 +VAT, quoted in writing after a free 48-hour diagnostic, and most jobs are no fix, no fee. Send the card on its own in a small rigid case — not in the camera. If you know roughly how many images you are missing and when they were taken, say so; it helps confirm we have recovered the right material rather than merely a lot of it.
Usually yes, provided nothing has been written since. Deleting removes the catalogue entry rather than the image data, and photographs carve back well because JPEG and RAW files begin with recognisable byte patterns. Take the card out of the camera immediately and stop shooting.
Probably not, if it was a quick format. That rewrites the index and leaves the image data in place, so the photos can be carved back by signature. A full or low-level format writes across the whole card and is a very different matter.
It depends where they were. Photos on a memory card recover well. Photos in internal phone storage are much harder, because that storage is encrypted and not presented as a removable disk — so the realistic routes are the phone’s Recently Deleted folder and any cloud backup, both of which are worth checking first.
Usually not. Filenames and folder structure live in the file system catalogue, and carving works from the image data itself, so recovered photos typically come back correct but named sequentially. The pictures are intact; the labelling is not.
Memory cards and USB media are from £250 plus VAT, fixed in a written quote after a free 48-hour diagnostic. Most jobs are no fix, no fee. Send the card on its own rather than in the camera.