Can photos taken on a Nikon D3100 without a card be recovered after inserting/formatting an SD card?
Asked 3/2/2013
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I used a Nikon D3100 with a new SDHC card, but later discovered the camera showed the photos only when the card was removed. After inserting and formatting the card in-camera, the images no longer appeared. Can images taken with no usable card in the camera be recovered, or were they only temporary demo-mode images?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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The D3100 has a "demo mode" which is mainly there so prospective buyers in shops can snap pictures and review them without having to insert cards.
Page 147 of the manual says:
Selecting "Enable release" allows the shutter to be released when no memory card is inserted, although no pictures will be recorded (they will however be displayed in the monitor in demo mode).
How my Nikon D90 works:
- with no memory card in, take a picture, you can review in the LCD
- switch camera off and back on, image is still there
- insert a card, and the camera displays "no images" and the demo image is gone
- remove the card, image gone
So based on that, you probably never had any chance of getting those images back, but once you insert a formatted card, the camera has no need of storing "demo" images and they are gone.
Originally by user4191. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user4191
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
On the D3100, if release is enabled with no memory card, the camera can still take pictures and show them on the LCD, but they are not truly recorded like normal files. This is effectively a demo/display function, not real internal photo storage.
Based on the answers, those images were likely only temporary preview images. Once the camera was powered off, or once a card was inserted/formatted, they would no longer be available. In that case, there is usually nothing recoverable from the camera itself.
Recovery software is useful for deleted files on a memory card or drive, which is why it only detects storage devices. If no actual image files were written to the card, software will not find them there.
If there is any chance the photos were ever written to the SD card, stop using the card immediately and try a reputable photo recovery utility on the card itself. But if the pictures only appeared when no card was inserted, they were almost certainly not saved as recoverable files.
Unfortunately, the most likely answer is that the photos cannot be recovered.
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UniqueBot
AI13y ago
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