Devices · cards taken from cameras
A card is a £250 + VAT job, and the look that comes first costs nothing. A card that shows as empty, refuses to unlock, or simply goes dark will nearly always give the pictures back — provided nobody reformatted it in the meantime. Nothing else fails this often, and cards choose their timing: day four of a fortnight away, or the exact moment you were copying them somewhere safer. Around Reading they come from the freelance camera and edit crews working near the Shinfield studios, from photographers covering the fixtures at Newbury racecourse, from a Hungerford antiques dealer whose listings stand or fall on the photography, and from families back off holiday.
An engineer answers, and looking is free
0800 6890668
| What you are seeing | What is likely wrong | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Canon: Memory card error, and on other bodies Cannot access the memory card | The body cannot read the card's file system | Take it out and go no further with it |
| Canon DSLR: Reinsert/change the card, after Card cannot be accessed | Dirty contacts, or a controller on its way out | Turn down the format prompt |
| Nikon: Card may be damaged, and a request to insert another card | The card is damaged, or nothing is being recognised at all | Don't format it in the camera body |
| Card locked / Card is write-protected | The little tab on the edge — or a controller that has shut itself | Lock switch already up? Then the fault is inside the card |
| Windows asking to format it before it will open | Windows shows the volume as RAW while the frames sit untouched | Decline every offer it makes |
| No memory card, reported with one sitting in the slot | Either the controller has gone, or the pads have | Chip-level work from this point on |
A case number goes on your device the day it reaches us, and an engineer then finds the real fault — free, and before anything else happens. You are told plainly what will come back and what will not, with one fixed figure in writing beside it. Nothing chargeable starts until you have read that and said yes.
Nothing is attempted on your card. A bit-for-bit clone comes off it first; the original goes into a sleeve and stays there, and all the work from that point runs against the image.
Repair work is done against the image. Rebuild the file tables and your folder names travel back with the pictures; where too little of the index survives, each file is identified instead by the bytes it opens with and carved out on its own. RAW behaves no differently from JPEG at that stage.
A file count tells you nothing worth knowing. Every recovered image is opened one by one, and each has to render in full at the size the camera wrote it.
You see the file list first, then decide. Nothing is invoiced until you have said yes, and on most jobs there is no fee at all if the data does not come back. What we pull off goes onto media bought in for your job, and the postage home is ours. The case stays open on the bench until you tell us the files open on your own machine.
A figure nobody actually holds: there is no reliable count of counterfeit cards in circulation. Manufacturers and labs both describe the problem as widespread, we see enough of them, and every confident percentage you find in print began as somebody's estimate. Knowing the true number would change nothing anyway — once data has gone past the genuine capacity of a faked card, it is not sitting anywhere for a lab to find.
Every frame came back off a 512GB SanDisk that had shown empty at breakfast. Nothing was attempted on the card itself — a clone was taken and all the work ran on that. The file system went back together first, then a deep carve went after the images that no longer had an entry pointing at them. The photographer kept the client.
Don't. A format writes a fresh index straight on top of the entries that carry your folder names, your file names and your dates, so what survives comes back as a numbered heap. Leave the card untouched and far more of the original structure returns with the pictures.
Yes, RAW too. Carving keys on the signature bytes at the head of a file. Each of RAF, DNG, ARW, NEF and CR3 opens with such a marker, and the video wrappers are built to the same principle. Much of the work on this bench arrives from people who photograph or film for a living.
Often not. Everything on a modern card lives on a single die, so what matters is whether the break crossed that die. Miss it and the pads can still be reached directly. The card is scrap either way; the pictures are the point.
Cards move faster than anything else here: most go back within two or three working days, quicker where a date is pressing. Tell us the date you need them by and the work is scheduled backwards from it.
You pay nothing for the look. What comes back is a list — the files that opened, the ones that did not, and one fixed figure to finish the job. Leave it switched off until you have that in writing.