Embedded Files
4/18/2015
File Recovery
FAT corruption at the rookery
link to Heron Rookery folder 70 pics (or IE browser )
Summary: I recovered these shots (and 3700 others) from my camera memory card which the camera and computer said contained "NO IMAGES".
The story began at my photo club meeting. Our leader had some nice Great Blue Heron shots and shared with me the location. I drove an hour to the spot at 6am on the following sunny Saturday. I'd never seen so many Herons at one place (maybe 30), nor the number of nests (maybe 15), nor such great access, lighting and background as well as elevation perspective. The small secondary macadam road is in the boondocks and on a hillside right next to the swamp so you just about look down into some nests. It's a Heron Honey Hole.
The female was hen pecking the male's beak and I was thinking it was a sign of affection. But then I realized she was kicking him out of the nest to go get more sticks. Five minutes later he comes back, she stretches neck vertical called the "Stretch" by bird experts, and trumpets with beak up in glee or to receive the hand off (beak off). She arranges sticks to form nest. Repeat cycle numerous times. Hope to return to photo the ugly fuzzy babies.
I thought this guy was just taking the high ground as a look out, but then captured him picking up twigs for the nest.
This guy had a little itch; lucky he's got long legs. They present such a variety of interesting and beautiful poses. Geeky and gawky. I don't have to have these pictures, but it was a challenge and rewarding exercise, pushing Alzheimer's away for a few more months.
Youtube 3 min Vid showing ZAR software application
I couldn't stop shooting on location, ending up with 3700 pictures over three hours filling up my 16 Gig SD card. It was mesmerizing even if I had not had a camera, although that enhances the visual experience. You pay more attention to what you are seeing. Although you don't see it all when you are so busy clicking away. Yet, after the fact, you see so much more in the photos that you could not absorb with the naked eye at the time.
Hurrying to download the images on the iMac desktop as I was going to visit friends in the Catskills that day. In my haste, I had difficulty downloading because I have been using the Image Capture software route versus the iPhoto route since I want to control where I put the images and iPhoto will double the image volume thus reducing the disk space in half. Image Capture however seems to limit the number of pictures to around 1000 as I deleted those captured from memory card then the card showed no images left to be downloaded and I knew there should have been another 2700 in there. Also noticed a tif file just where the images stopped downloading. Perhaps I hit an errant button while shooting that confused my software download or I exceeded the card capacity.
Tried several computer geek friends for help and various aggravating software programs to no avail. Even paid $20 for an authorized Apple App named CardRaider which was very limited and could only recover a few photos which I already had downloaded (they refunded me). Apple store geeks not quite knowledgable enough, Best Buy geeks said they could do it $250 minimum, no thanks. Tried a few Windows programs on my old Windows machine. There are numerous misleading "Free Download" programs which might show a limited number of files and then you can't actually recover them until you pay up for the program. But there's no guarantee it will really get you what you want anyway.
Just about to wipe the card clean with a re-format after exasperating computer crap. Then finally, I found on dp school a blog by Helen (undated but seems to be a few years old) which documented this ZAR recovery program (Windows). That was the nuts, can't describe how pleasing that was to bypass the FAT 32 bit, File Allocation Table which indexes where files are stored even after they seem to be deleted.
Install was an easy matter of minutes, then it took about 6 hours total to process and create the photos, but their graphics display let you know progress was taking place. Made a disk image map with all the data cluster elements, then itemized the 11,000 files and you choose which to save. There are three times as many files because the camera makes two sizes of icons for display on the camera back for reviewing pictures.
It was easy enough to sort the files by size and delete the small unwanted ones. Then delete the thousand I already had and copy the rest to my $10 flash drive of 16 Gig for transfer to iMac. Finally run a low level format of my memory card in the camera to clear up the corruption.
Apple phone support for an hour finally says the SD card > 4 Gig can't be formatted (FAT 32bit) should be formatted on iMac to "Mac OS X extended journaled" to be recognized. That was the Key. Then also need to do low level format in camera. I did this and shot 12 to 16 Gigs successfully. He said the card wouldn't then work in a PC but mine did also work on my Windows XT system. Flash drives in FAT 32 (>4 Gig) will work on either platform.
A free SD card program exits from the SD Card Association to format cards for either platform.
Depraved murderer Jodi Arias would still be walking free had it not been for the recovery of photos she deleted at the murder scene capturing the actual murder and her dragging the body. She even ran the Sony Cybershot DSC H9 camera through the washing machine with bleach. Forensic digital analysis Testimony Day 6 . If she had simply removed the memory card she would be free.
Aside: When we were about 10 years old, brother Dale and I snuck back to the stream and pond behind our house stalking a great big bird we were thinking was some kind of exotic wild duck. Killed it with a 410 shotgun, carried it home proudly to show off to Dad, the great white hunter, when he arrived home from work. He just laughed and said, "That's just a scrawny heron not fit for eating." He enjoyed retelling that story many times to the neighborhood friends. Perhaps this is why I'm so enthralled by these herons now.
Obsessive Compulsive Photographers Disorder is now a documented condition characterized by excessive preoccupation with f-stop and shutter speed. If you are cleaning your lens when there is nothing on it, you may falling victim to this affliction.
Mike Lemery on Vimeo bald eagle videos
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