If you have accidentally deleted the photos from your Nikon D850, don’t panic, chances are you can get them back without too much hassle.

The purpose of deletion on an imaging device is not the termination of its target, it’s for freeing up precious memory spaces. Once a delete command’s issued on Nikon D850, the operating system’s instructed to mark the memory sectors where the target files are stored as blank, it’s given the permission to overwrite that place in the future should the need arises, otherwise, the operating system doesn’t exert itself to do much beyond that. So, the actual data that makes up the files are actually intact after even after the deletion, and they can be easily brought back with proper file recovery software.

1. Download a photo recovery tool of your preference. Recuva, Photorec or stellar phoenix photo recovery are all excellent choices. Photorec, for instance, is an open-source program that’s contributed and maintained by some of the most talented and passionate developers, It utilizes a sophisticated algorithm that’s meticulous on rounding up all the recoverable files while being gentle on the established files system to avoid further damage. Arguably the only downside of Photorec is its lack of a graphical user interface, which can be a bit difficult to operate for users who are used to knobs and buttons.
2. Take out the SD card from your D850 and insert it to the SD card slot on your computer.
3. Launch file recovery application, the app automatically detects the attached SD card and asks permission to run a scan, confirm to start the scan.
4. The scanning process will likely to be lengthy if the camera’s been through some use. The app will find all files in a recoverable state, so not only the mistakenly deleted files will be brought back, but also the ones you meant to get rid of, they will all come back.
5. Once the scanning’s completed, save all files to your computer’s hard drive.

A few more things

Some of the photos appears to be damaged with part of grey area, what should I do?

After the deletion, the camera OS’s given the permission to overwrite the memory space where the deleted files were hosted, if that happens, the deleted files can be corrupted or partially damaged, this might be fixed. Repairing a damaged photo requires more advanced techs than simply restoring a deleted one, currently there’re few products claims to do this, with mixed result depending on how severe the damage is, JPEG repair, is one of the offerings.

QA

If your file loss problem can’t be solved with the solutions proposed in this article (or lack thereof), or having trouble with using the software Photorec or Stellar Phoenix, feel free to post your question in the comment area, I will try answer each exemplary questions and feature them on the top.