Walgreens System Works With Jpg's Only- Found Out The Hardway!!!

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

I think I am in a screwed situation but just don't know.

I went down to New Orleans this past Week for Mardi Gras and Katrina well I was running out of card space, 20 gigs was not enough, and I needed to find a way to burn the files to CD and there is really no place to do that down there, Kinkos was not easily available and the Library has a policy of no burning things to CD so I went to Walgreens where they have photo kiosks to transfer data from flash cards to be burned to CD.

WEll I went there to transfer the data and IT WAS NOT TRANSFERED!@!!!! I have CD's with individual files on them but instead of being 6 or 13.4 meg files the system has them as 364 KB jpgs that are black-but oriented in both portrait and landscape modes. SO THERE SOFT WARE SCREWED EVERYTHING UP.

ANY IDEA HOW I MAY RECOVER ANYTHING FROM THIS MESS?

At least I have some shots since I was keeping my cards full of data until I needed to reuse them just in case this happened. So have most of Tuesdays costume shots but don't have over 1/2 of my Katrina work and a lot of the parades.

I am so mad!!!!!
added at 4:30
I went to Walgreens today in Dallas and found out that I am screwed, at least the guy gave me back my money for my CD's that I had a receipt with me for, SYSTEM WILL HANDLE JPG ONLY-THEY NEED TO PUT A SIGN UP NO RAW FILES!!!!! Also train their people!

[JamesB]

sounds like the photo kiosk at wallgreens just copied the jpg thumbnail. Im guessing you were shooting raw+jpg (maybe raw + small jpg) and it only copied over the jpg.

you could try one of those file recovery utilities to see if you can recover the deleted files from them CF card

James

[AndrewCCM]

Ugh. I ran into this situation a couple of years ago (running out of space) and finally opt'd to buy a Epson P2000. Both my partner and I got one and they work great and are small. I have a laptop, but many times it's inconvenient or not practical to carry along. I believe there are a lot of newer types of storage devices that are much cheaper with less functionality, but might be worth looking into. I agree with James, if you shot raw, I am guessing the Kiosk didn't know how to correctly read the format and just copied the embedded thumbnails (incorrectly obviously). I am not sure there is anyway to recover from this unfortunately. I am so sorry this happened to you.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

SHot RAW only, camera is 13.4 mg file so NO JPG files. I have a laptop but didn't take it because of how I was travelling this time and didn't want to leave it in the car or at where I was staying, need to look into one of the small storage devices/

On the Cards the 20mg that I have are full of pictures that I was able to keep, don't think that there is a way to pull up old data that was on the card before if they were written over-I had a deep dark fealing that those kiosks may screw up so didn't clear a card of files until I had to shoot it again but most of my early work is lost I guess. Photo kiosks were taking a LONG time to copy over the data-15+ minutes so I assumed that they were picking up all the data-guess if I wasn't a pro an just shooting JPG I would have had the data in some form at least. WALGREENS NEEDS TO TRAIN THEIR STAFF ABOUT THIS SINCE NOT ONE OF OVER 10 PEOPLE AT 3 LOCATIONS SAID A THING THAT THE SYSTEM WON'T WORK!!!!!!!!!! WITH RAW FILES!!!!!! JUST tosses up a black box when they view it which I assumed just indicated that their system couldn't interpret the RAW data into jpg form-didn't know that the#$%^&*()_ system would DUMP THE DATA!

I do know that their system does hold data in it-wonder if there is a way to access it on line and maybe get the data? It is on line accessable. Just don't know.

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by DEMDeepEllumMusic

I do know that their system does hold data in it-wonder if there is a way to access it on line and maybe get the data? It is on line accessable. Just don't know.

I think you are out of luck, honestly. You've overwritten the data on the cards, so I doubt anything other than maybe thumbnails would be recoverable. This is unfortunately one of the main issues with using proprietary, undisclosed formats.

Even if the kiosk held the data, it is probably just the corrupted versions that it wrote to the disk that would be kept (even then I doubt it)

[johnastovall]

If you are interested in the Epson P-2000 route, they have refer units on sale with a rebate.

I just saw then as I did my daily RD-1 check.

[Jim Victory]

This is a hard lesson learned but you have to plan on backing up your files in the field or buy more cards. Get a PSD as others have said and take a laptop or DVD burner in the future for such shoots. I always like to have at least three levels of backup.

I'm sorry you lost your shots but you should never put it in someone elses hands to backup your data. Plan ahead and protect your data.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Jim I have a laptop but did not take it because I did not know how secure where I was staying was going to be and I was not going to leave it in my car at night.

It comes down to Walgreens not training their photo staffs, I went to a Walgreens here in Dallas and I talked to the girl and she knew instantly what happened and told me that their system can handle JPG only- I could have shot 13.4 meg jpg based files with my camera if they had told me or there were signs on the photo kiosks that say our system will not work with RAW data. In fact the assistant manager said that he was suprised that it would even process through the data on the cards.

So I also found out that most stores do a file dump every 24 hours so even my file data in New Orleans was lost now. I even had at least 2 Managers in NEw Orleans even not tell me that the system will only handle JPG's- so lack of training in their system.

I have 20mg of cards that are still full so I do have a lot of pics but I also lost about 24mg of cards that were sent off to the system to be transferred to CD.

Well at least none of the shots were of Pulitzer Quality- HA HA HA!

So I still can tell the story just not in as much detail and I won't have some of the Parades that I shot- man shooting 20 parades over 7 days is TIRING!

So IN THE FIELD SHOOT RAW+JPG!!!!!!!!!!!

[kenw]

I don't know of any of the kiosk systems that handle anything othere than JPG. I'm not sure that shooting R+J would work any better. If it DID save the JPG (which is doubtful as it isn't a separate file that the reader can see), how would that have helped?

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

Not Sure Ken but on my camera when shooting RAW and JPG it does do two seperate file writes to the card so their systems would eitheer take the JPG or reject things.

BTW I tried buying one of the portable storage drives down there, even went to one of the pro shops that was open, and nobody had them in stock. Best Buy-NO, Curcuit City-N0, and a couple other places. Flash cards were all over $50 a GB which I was not going to pay since they are really only about $25 a GB as shown at the PPA convention last month. (This isn't for the super fast write cards either those were over $80 a GB!!).

Well I have plenty of shots just not all that I took and I have all of Fat Tuesdays craziness.

I also could have shot just JPG and skipped the RAW if I had known after last Friday when I started dumping files.

Man it is a lot worse down there than people realize and we are talking about an area that runs over 200 miles along the coast and up to several miles inland!

[ndsimm]

sorry about the loss, but there are some great data recovery programs out there that will read the CF card and recover the lost files. I have one called GETDATABACK and it has saved me on more than one occassion.....

[kenw]

If you are in Dallas, Fry's has a similar storage device made by Wolverine. IIRC, these will copy ANY file on the card, from image files to .XLS and whatever. They don't have the image-display feature and are considerably less expensive.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

The cards that I have were all written over, maybe a few files available on the one in camera that wasn't fully used so no luck there. I had a feeling that this may be goofed up so didn't mass deleate the cards just did it as I needed fresh space so I do have a lot of work but just lost a lot of work.

Well Live and Learn. Like I said nothing of historical importance lost other than the documenting of how bad it really is and how extensive it is but I should have shots from most neighborhoods hit that I visited, hopefully some of the Lakeview shots are on one of the cards-been so disgussted today with it I have not really worked with the files yet. Do have to move some now so I have room for the Cowtown Marathon on cards tommorrow.

[ndsimm]

Originally Posted by DEMDeepEllumMusic

The cards that I have were all written over, maybe a few files available on the one in camera that wasn't fully used so no luck there. I had a feeling that this may be goofed up so didn't mass deleate the cards just did it as I needed fresh space so I do have a lot of work but just lost a lot of work.
.

Download the trial for GETDATABACK....it should still find some files, even though you used the card again...if it finds them, you'll have to buy it to retrieve them....
http://www.runtime.org

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

OK Finally was able to get the key to Get Data Back to see what they were recovering, had pulled up the trial to see that it was getting old RAW files from the cards, and IT WORKS!

MAN YOU WOULD BE SUPRISED TO SEE WHAT THIS BABY CAN PULL OFF OF AN OLD CARD!

FOLKS IF YOU EVER SHOT ANYTHING THAT IS SUSPICIOUS AND YOU THINK CLEARING THAT CARD GOT RID OF IT, IT DIDN'T. I put in one card and it was pulling up files from at least 10 shoots before! I mean I had filled the card with shots,downloaded, reshot etc at least 10 cycles!

THIS IS A SUPER PROGRAM FOR UNDER #$100!! It is a bit slow but what the heck MY PICS ARE BACK!