I made one of the big mistakes of photography last night. I formatted my SD card before checking that everything had been imported correctly. I’m still not 100% sure how this happened but none of the videos I recorded were imported.
Most of the time I don’t bother formatting the card immediately because there’s plenty of space on it, and I might just want a second backup before the files are copied to external storage but this time I did. I’m still kicking myself for doing that.
My Sony A7 III (unhelpfully) gives the name “Untitled” to the SD card and if Lightroom doesn’t detect the card I’ll click on the device name at the top of the import menu but this morning I noticed that DCIM and PRIVATE were expanded. Had I clicked on DCIM previously when importing? I don’t think so but it’s looking likely.
When the Sony A7III records video it’s to the PRIVATE/M4ROOT directory.
When I noticed my error I tried to restore the files using Recuva but it was no use. It didn’t find the videos. It’s an awful sinking feeling when you realise something like this has happened. 🙁
