Can I recover these images???

I shot two pro soccer games the other night. I took almost 1000 pictures and when I got home and tried to download the images to my computer there were about 250 of them that are just showing up as a black image. I was able to review the images on my camera while I was shooting the game, but now I can't see anything. It is strange because these 250 images are right in the middle of the 1000 I shot. The ones before and after are fine.

I clicked on properties of the files, and all the information appears to be there (size of file, all the camera settings, etc...). I tried to download them using an external card reader, and then directly from the camera and also tried to use Image Rescue 3 to see if I could recover these images, but nothing has worked. I tried to contact the memory card company, but they say they have never heard of this happening (which I seriously doubt). I have tried using Windows, Picasa 3, Photoshop 7 & Photoshop Elements 7 to view the images, but no luck. The images are all jpgs.

Has anyone had this happen to them? If so, were you able to restore the images? Any information would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Anyone?

I have tried to post this same question in the Equipment/Storage forum, but have not gotten any responses, so I thought I would check here.

Thanks.

You have given us so little information about your problem.

Is your only problem that the images are black?

Do you get any error message when you try to copy them?

What happens if you open them in DPP or similar? Is there any EXIF information in the images?

Can you preview the images (without zoom) in the camera, like you could when you took them?

Yes. The images are showing up black. I can no longer view them in the camera either.

All the EXIF information is there as far as I can tell.

No error message.

I have not tried DPP, but have tried to open them in photoshop, picasa 3, photoshop elements 7 and any other way I could think of.

Thanks.

The only time I have seen that with my stuff was on a cheap CF card. Dead sectors on the media. Are you sure they aren't just black images? You know, maybe the sky, or way way underexposed? 250 images seems to be a lot though.

Post the EXIF info for a black image.

A broken card or broken file system would normally result in error messages when copying the files.

Are you sure that you did see good previews of these images while shooting?

Did you restart the camera sometime during the shoot? Maybe the firmware had gone bonkers so it wrote bad information to the card, but allowed you to see a good instant preview while the image was still cached in the camera. Then you did restart the camera - maybe because you needed to replace a battery, or it just timed out and power-saved. After the restart, the camera started to write correct images again.

I have had that happen with a low battery, But only for a few shot

I did not restart the camera at all during my shoot and did not change any settings during either game except to bump up the ISO a few times as the sun went down.

I seem to remember glancing at a couple of the shots after I took them, but I must admit that I don't do that too much during a game (I perfer to review my shots afterwards on the computer), so it is possible that I did not. All of the missing shots were taken during the 2nd half of the second game of the day.

Here is a scaled down version of what I am looking at. I'm not sure if you will be able to see the EXIF data or not. I tried to copy it from photoshop, but I couldn't do it. I am not entirely sure what to look for to tell if there is anything missing or wrong.

HTTP response: 403 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

I have never had one of my Canon dSLR fail to write an image. The Dimage 7 has a number of times run out of batteries while saving, resulting in a zero-byte file. On the other hand, the Dimage did drain batteries like crazy so it was quite likely that it would run the batteries dry.

The batteries were fine. I did not have to replace them, and they worked for the 100 or so shots I took after these. Very strange.

That image was only 868 bytes large, and didn't contain any extra information.

Did you shoot jpeg or RAW? How large are the files?

The file name said "Recovered_Oct_02_2009​" - is there a difference in file size or anything else between images read out with the rescue program or when just copied from the memory card?

It's not a Kingston card is it? I've had similar problems with Kingston cards on my MKIII. Ended up scrapping it. What a waste.

I restored the images to my computer using Image Rescue 3 to see if that would make any difference (it didn't help). The images were all jpegs, and they are about 4mb a piece (3888x2592), so I scaled it down so it wouldn't take up the whole screen. I didn't figure there was much point in posting a big picture of a black screen anyway.

It is a Kingston card. I did some checking online and they seemed to get good reviews. I guess I will be returning it.

Doesn't look completely black, kinda looks like something was in front of the lens like a hand. Any chance you bumped the exposure down on accident at halftime and didn't fix it until later?

I guess it is possible, but I didn't change any settings except the ISO. There was definitely not anything in front of the lens.