Disney on Ice Disasters of the Photographic Kind

It was supposed to be a wonderful night.  We were going to see Disney on Ice’s Toy Story 3.  I had packed my new DSLR and made sure I had a bunch of extra memory cards.  The kids were psyched as were we.  We got there early, wandered around and finally took our seats.  As the show began, we were dazzled by the toys dancing on the ice.  The kids were mesmerized.  What could ruin such a fantastic experience?

Batteries.

During the intermission, I noticed that my batteries were running low.  No problem.  I had packed 2 sets of spares.  Be prepared, right?  Except my first backup set reported that it was low on charge.  Now I began to get nervous and popped in the second set.  Also low.  Suddenly, I remembered that these were rechargeable batteries fresh from the package and I should have maybe charged them before tossing them in my bag.  The good news was that I had non-rechargeable batteries ready to go… The bad news was that they were back at home.  (As B is fond of reminding me, she told me over and over to pack them and I kept putting it off thinking I had 2 perfectly good pairs in there.)

If the story ended here, I would be bemoaning not being able to take photos for the rest of the show, but I’d be showing you some of the wonderful shots I got.  So why are there no shots?  Easy.  My batteries were low but Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear had just taken the stage.  I *had* to have a shot of the strawberry scented stuffed bear so I set my camera, took a photo, and… my camera shut off.  Oh well.  I started my camera back up to see if I got the photo and my camera reported “CARD NOT FORMATTED.”

Wait, WHAT?!!  What about the other hundred or so photos I just took?  Were they gone for good?

I sat during the next half of the show trying to enjoy it as much as possible, but looming over the whole rest of the production was the dark cloud of data loss.  When I got home, and got the kids into bed, I confirmed that the card reported as not formatted in Windows as well.

I went to some forums I know of (and Twitter) and posted a desperate cry for help.  Responses came in, but program after program failed to find my photos.  Finally, I found one that did, except for two things.  First of all, it required me to pay $40 to extract the found photos (no problem here).  Secondly, it reported that the photos were between 25KB and 160KB.  DSLR’s take much larger photos.  My other shots from the camera were easily 2MB or more.

I’m not giving up yet, but I’m really frightened that I may have lost all of my photos.  I guess I should look on the bright side.  At least this happened at Disney on Ice and not Disney SM Moms this March!