Near the end of my just finished South Africa trip my 64gb XQD card mysteriously deleted hundreds of images when I apparently exceeded the card capacity. Using a Z7 shooting lossless RAW. I started reviewing my photos after visiting the SÁ penguins only to find all the prior images were gone. The card shows 120 or so images, all of which were of the penguins. From initial searches it may be that many of the missing images may be recoverable. I would greatly appreciate any recommendations for who or how I can proceed. Also has anyone else seen this happen? I may have lost a lot of my trip and am very upset!

I have 2 questions regarding this — the first is a bigger issue. I shoot backup — with prime card being CFExpress 256, and backup, 64gb SD Card. I have 3 external hard drives. For 2 of them I download the 64gb cards and do my work/processing on them. I just started downloading the CFExpress to the 3rd EHD, and intend to keep that intact/original/unprocessed. I had been downloading both cards to each hard drive. When people shoot backup, you have two copies of the same material. How do people think of dealing with the duplicate material ? Does it really matter whether you draw off one or the other or both cards ?

Second question — I do quite a bit of work on safari, and generally am looking for action situations. It’s not too difficult to see/anticipate something that could develop into action — like birds in flight or cats on a hunt. When I see this possibility, I’ve just wondered about switching from backup to sequential so I could record just on the CFExpr card, which has a considerably faster write speed than my Sony Tough SD cards(1480 vs 299 MB/s). When shooting continuous it doesn’t take long before the camera needs to take a breather to let the processing catch up. I will be doing some test shooting to see what the difference will be — I assume fairly significant — but just wondering if people have worked this way ? Thanks !

Is my camera worth fixing?

I was walking on some wet rocks in Norway and fell. My d850 landed directly on the rocks making a loud brittle crack. That body was opened along the upper right seams going forward, backward and down. The camera was stuck in the On state. The LCD panel was blank and the power switch and rear wheel didn't work. I could remove and replace the battery to 'turn it off, and on'. It was stuck in a fairly generic A state at a reasonable aperture for the day. I was able to focus and shoot using the touch screen. I continued shooting some lighthouses and old military sights south of Oslo, Norway. Later, I bought some small screwdrivers and disassembled it. I was able to reconnect the LCD and Power switch boards and they work. Everything works. While inside I found several places where the screw holes were broken off of the main cast aluminum structure. It autofocuses accurately and there is no light bleeding onto the sensor. Everything works except the diopter adjustment won't adjust to a 20/20 vision eye, but will focus to a 'reader' pair of glasses. Of course, the body integrity is not good.

Repairing it will take a skilled repair tech hours. The shutter count is in the 210,000 range. I can't afford a new d850 or Z at this point. I have a D7100 so I'm not without a camera.

Any idea from the forum how much it might cost to repair? Do people part out broken cameras? Other interesting options?