Images transferred back to SD card are low resolution on camera's screen

The convoluted title tries to describe the following.

 

My daughter's Nikon W100 had a corrupt SD card from which I manage to recover images using PhotoRec.

 

I bought a new SD card and formatted it in the camera.

 

Then I transferred the recovered photos back to the SD card.

 

Weirdly, on the camera's screen the images are very low resolution and pixelated, whereas on my computer they are full resolution and look normal.

 

Any idea what causes the low resolution?

 

Thanks in advance

Philip

The way cameras deal with thumbnails is very far from standardised, even within the same manufacturer.

 

Even if you specifically take RAW only, the camera still makes and shows you an instant JPEG for image review.

 

Equally, files that have been 'recovered' are not always as they once were. Sometimes EXIF is missing. Maybe the info needed for a full res thumbnail is corrupt or missing?

 

Once I managed to recover a whole cards worth of images... only to discover all it had managed to do was recover the very small 50kb low res. thumbnails

 

Can you zoom into the low res images in camera?

How did you transfer the recovered images from the computer to the new SD card?

 

I would format the new SD card inside the W100 again and then take some pictures. Transfer those new images from the new SD card to your computer. Pay attention to the folder where those images are on the SD card.

 

Format the SD card again inside the W100 and then transfer the new images from your computer back to the SD card, in the same folder from where you got the images earlier. Also copy some of those recovered images to that same folder on the card. Perhaps rename some recovered images to the same image file name format as the captured images.

Sandisk has a recovery program that came with the last memory card I bought from them. I'm sure there are others as well. Maybe one of these programs could help you. Good luck.

Thank you Mike. I can zoom in on many but not all and then the image is sharp as normal. But some low-res images remain low-res and can't be zoomed, which is odd because I only copied the big JPG files which I verified on my computer are full-size images.

 

The way cameras deal with thumbnails is very far from standardised, even within the same manufacturer.

 

Even if you specifically take RAW only, the camera still makes and shows you an instant JPEG for image review.

 

Equally, files that have been 'recovered' are not always as they once were. Sometimes EXIF is missing. Maybe the info needed for a full res thumbnail is corrupt or missing?

 

Once I managed to recover a whole cards worth of images... only to discover all it had managed to do was recover the very small 50kb low res. thumbnails

 

Can you zoom into the low res images in camera?

Maybe one of these programs could help you. Good luck.

AFAIK the hi res images are OK, just the weird LCD backscreen thumbnails.....

Thank you for the suggestion. I did everything you describe in the first paragraph but will try the other things tomorrow. I didn't think of renaming the files, good idea.

 

How did you transfer the recovered images from the computer to the new SD card?

 

I would format the new SD card inside the W100 again and then take some pictures. Transfer those new images from the new SD card to your computer. Pay attention to the folder where those images are on the SD card.

 

Format the SD card again inside the W100 and then transfer the new images from your computer back to the SD card, in the same folder from where you got the images earlier. Also copy some of those recovered images to that same folder on the card. Perhaps rename some recovered images to the same image file name format as the captured images.

Thank you Alan. The card I bought unfortunately didn't have that but PhotoRec was really quite effective and I recommend it.

 

Sandisk has a recovery program that came with the last memory card I bought from them. I'm sure there are others as well. Maybe one of these programs could help you. Good luck.