Partially Viewable Corrupted Raw File

[ken-rahaim]

I guess it could've been worse. I could've lost EVERY image from the museum's grand opening shoot I

covered last weekend. As it was, I lost about 1/5th of them. But when it comes right down to it, it was

the one with museum director and the Marilyn Monroe impersonator posed under the grand hall's

domed skylight that really hurts to lose. I'm hoping someone can do one of three things for

me:<br><br>

 

1 - Recover the photo<br>

2 - Help me recover the photo<br>

3 - Categorically conclude there's no chance of recovering the photo so I can get along with the

grieving process and eventually put the loss behind me.<br><br>

 

Here are some of the details: The image was shot with a Canon 5D. It was fine on the card (which has

since been used and reused several times so no chance of recovering it there) and it was fine on my

home computer where it was initially transfered to. The problem occured when it went from my home

computer to my studio computer via my little USB portable drive. Once I got the images to the studio

and opened them up I discovered the corruption as you can see in this screen capture:<br><br>

 

<IMG src="http://zzz.globaldriftersphoto.com/badraw/corruptcr2.jpg" alt="Bad Raw! Very bad raw!

Go to your room!"><br><br>

 

Unfortunately, I'd already erased the files on my home computer (a Mac G5) and the files on the little

USB drive were corrupt too. Given that, my suspicion is that my little, el cheap-o, portable USB drive is

culprit (in which case its getting ready to find itself in the garbage post-haste).<br><br>

 

Has anyone ever experienced something like this? The only thing that gives me hope is that some of the

other corrupted images come up fine in Adobe Bridge for 30-90 seconds and then the odd rectangular

patches of streaked colors pop up. I thought perhaps this was the result of one of two things: a) the

original image was fine but once the xmp data was read in, the corruption occured, or b) during the

conversion from the camera's linear image to Adobe's curved image. I've tried deleting the xmp file and

reopening the image but that didn't work. I've also tried opening the file in DPP and tinkering with it in

an effort to recover it but none of that worked either. If you'd like to give it a shot, here is the url to the

corrupted raw file:<br><br>

 

<a href="http://zzz.globaldriftersphoto.com/badraw/_MG_6827.CR2">http://

zzz.globaldriftersphoto.com/badraw/_MG_6827.CR2</a> <-- 'right click and save as' otherwise

you're just going to get a pile of jibberish downloading if you just click the link<br><br>

 

That is my sad story. I'm hoping there is someone out there that has had a similar experience and even

if it can't be fixed, at least will be able to commiserate with me. Thanks for any help.<br><br>

 

P.S. Morals of the story: 1) Don't delete until you're very sure, 2) Try to minimize the number of xfers of

image files until they've been backed up and 3) Don't use el-cheapo USB drives.

[JosvanEekelen]

I have seen similar pictures with a faulty harddisk. In that case the JPG parts of the file were still intact so I still had some usable pictures. I'd look into that first, if you have JPG-s of these pictures (Does the 5D also store JPG files like the 10D?).

Just my 2c,

 

Jos.

[robidooo]

At work I don't have any fancy image software. I downloaded your photo and was able to open it perfectly with "Faststone Image viewer". A simple "save as..." and I have a perfect jpg you can work with. Seems odd to me that Photoshop or the DPP can't do the same. But you do lose all advantages of working in RAW however.<div></div>

[r.sriram]

The raw is corrupted, but the embedded JPEG is fine. I've had this happen when my CF card was messed up. In fact it was much worse.

[ken-rahaim]

Thanks for the responses to my problem!

 

I just checked and my 5D is set to save raw files only (no jpegs). I understand there is an

embeded bitmap for the thumbnail, but I don't know of any other jpegs being stored

within the file so I'm a bit confused (wouldn't be the first time :)).

[paulh]

As Stephane has demonstrated, it may be worthwhile getting a couple of other (free) RAW converters - you can try dcraw, RawShooter Essentials, IrfanView (which uses dcraw code) etc.

 

Sometimes (not always) another application will work, whereas the standard one will not. Same with corrupt word/excel files - often when the native application will not open the file, Open Office (or similar) will open the file.

 

Good luck.

[darrel_wright]

Maybe I'm too late, but when you "delete" files off a a drive, they are still there until something else overwrites that area on the disk...just not visible to the file system. There are several unerase utilities that can recover such files.

[hugh_best]

im having a similair meltdown, i managed to recover my entire family portrait shoot, but all

of the raw files appear to be corrupted. i can see the 160 pixel wide previews, but cant get

into the raw files. i tried downloading faststone as one of you suggested but it only works on

pc's.

can anybody offer any help? please?