The big problem with the Camera and Data Card

At 9.38am on 20 September I had a moment of deep despair. Along the walk, I had been taking lots  of pictures as well making notes of what I was seeing. That morning it appeared that I had lost all the pictures I had taken since starting Phase 2 - and as my handwritten notes were no substitute for the images, I didn't know what I could do to recover them.

That evening (fortunately then back home) I realised that I could read all the pictures up to 4.49pm the previous day. Something had happened then, or more exactly halfway through a picture I had taken then, which meant I could not read the remaining files. I had 69 files on the data card which the computer told me were there, and about the right size, but I couldn't read them with any imaging software. There then followed some messages between me and my camera manufacturer's help desk, but having established that the camera worked perfectly well with a different data card, suspicion turned to the card, not the camera. I thought the data had been corrupted because there was apparently something still there, and it could, I hoped, still be recovered. I took it to a local computer-geek place who in turn sent it off to another one.

It turns out that I had been sold a counterfeit card! It claimed to be 32GB, printed on the card but also the firmware inside had been tampered with, so that the camera and computer also thought there was 32GB there. In reality, it was only 8GB, so once that was filled up there was no more room - and the apparent 69 files were just zeroes. I know where I bought it and I still have the receipt, so obviously I am following that up.

I'm dealing with this now because I'm working through my notes and photographs along the way. Having got to this point on the walk, I could work out exactly what was missing - and in the end it turned out to be only about four miles' worth. I have just been back there and with the aid of the written notes, succeeded in retaking the pictures, and one or two more. Fortunately, the trees hadn't shed too many leaves since, and the weather was much the same, so I won't have lost too much continuity. 

My camera phone was my backup for the reminder of the journey. I was lucky to be at home by then, because it meant I could download from the camera daily in order to clear the memory for the next day. That worked, too, although there may be some reduction in image quality.

This problem could have been very much worse.