Entries Tagged 'Photography' ↓

Ran into a minor problem with a Compact Flash card that was loaned out (along with my Canon point-and-shoot). I assumed that the borrower had copied off all of his photos prior to returning it to me. Turns out that this wasn’t the case. And to complicate matters slightly, the card had been used since it was returned to me (not filled to capacity, but I’d taken around thirty pictures). How to recover these images (keeping in mind that this solution is not specific to Compact Flash–it should work just the same for SD, MiniSD, etc.).

I paid a quick visit to the Forensics Wiki’s page on data recovery tools and found two utilities right away: PhotoRescue and PhotoRec. Options. Swell.

I’m familiar with DataRescue (makers of the IDA Pro disassembly suite), and PhotoRescue allows you to view the results of the recovery pass(es) prior to purchasing the software, so I figured I’d give it a shot. As promised, it presented me with previews of a number of images (ninety-six, to be exact) available for recovery, then asked for $29. Not a lot of money, but not free (as in beer). On to PhotoRec.

I downloaded PhotoRec, only to find that the downloaded package name was actually testdisk-6.8.darwin.tar.bz2. Funny thing about that: I already have testdisk installed from MacPorts. And sure enough, a quick path check confirmed that the binary for photorec has been with me all along.

A recovery attempt with PhotoRec was as simple as:

photorec /d my_output_path /dev/disk1

This sets the output directory and device from which PhotoRec should recover data, then spawns a terminal-based wizard. From there I chose:

1. Disk /dev/disk1 - 512 MB / 488 MiB (RO)

2. Intel/PC partition

3. FAT16 >32M

4. Other

5. Extract files from whole partition

And that was it! Ninety-six images successfully recovered in less than two minutes, at no cost.

UPDATE1: Formatting the card via the camera menu appears to have no effect on PhotoRec’s (and presumably PhotoRescue’s) ability to extract old images.

UPDATE2: NYT article on photo recovery tools and services. Mentions PhotoRescue, among others.

As I was going through some old Google Reader items that I’d saved (starred, whatever), I came across Jim Goldstein’s article on the U.S. Copyright Office’s Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) beta. I saved this article because I’d intended to sign up, but had heard that there was a significant approval backlog.

I submitted my beta application on 8 Jan, and less than 24 hours later, I am the proud owner of an eCO account!

If you were waiting to enroll, this might just be a good time. Request your very own eCO account here.

If you have twenty-two minutes to spare and care to watch James Nachtwey’s 2007 TED Prize acceptance speech, I believe you’ll find it time well spent.

The speech–framed by photographs taken during the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer’s 30-plus year career–touches on everything from his time in North Ireland during the 1981 IRA hunger strike to his work documenting the struggle of disabled Iraq war veterans in 2007.

For three decades, James Nachtwey has covered many of the most important military, political and humanitarian events in the world. And in twenty-two minutes, he somehow manages to present an entire career as though it were a single, purposeful moment.

See also:

• The TED biography of James Nachtwey and his wish.
• Biographies of Nachtwey’s fellow 2007 recipients, Bill Clinton and E. O. Wilson.

Though I’ve never had the opportunity to use one for any extended period of time, I’ve been keeping an eye on Rob Galbraith’s on-going coverage of the EOS-1D Mark III autofocus issue. If you’re at all interested in very high-performance photographic equipment, the entire series is worth a read.

The most recent installment includes a video clip (about half-way down the page) of one of Rob’s test shoots with a sprinter. Damn, that thing is fast!