Photos & RAW · photo card with bracketed RAW or JPEG
Recover missing frames from an exposure bracket
Can a missing frame from a bracketed sequence be recovered?
Short answer
Only if the frame was actually written to the card. A gap in a three-, five- or seven-frame bracket can mean deletion, an incomplete import or a buffered shot that never reached storage. Search every card and import folder for the exact sequence numbers, then scan the source card read-only for frames that are really missing.
The situation
A three-, five-, or seven-frame bracket has an internal filename or timestamp gap.
A bracket is a fixed sequence of three, five or seven exposures, so a gap is easy to see and hard to explain. Before scanning anything, establish whether the missing exposure ever reached the card, because a frame the camera never wrote cannot be recovered from it.
01 / Diagnose
Work out what actually disappeared
Three causes produce the same gap. The frame was written and later deleted, in which case its blocks are probably still readable. The import copied only part of the bracket, so the file is still on the card. Or the buffer emptied too slowly, the sequence ended and the last exposure was never stored. Filename numbering alone cannot tell these apart.
The gap may be deletion, incomplete import, or a buffered frame that never reached storage.
Check the last known path, trash and backups without writing to the original device.
02 / Protect the source
Preserve the best recovery chance
- 1
Read the exact file numbers on both sides of the gap and note how many exposures the bracket setting should have produced.
- 2
Search the import folder, the catalogue and any second card slot for those numbers before touching the source card.
- 3
If the frames are genuinely absent everywhere, scan the source card read-only for the format the bracket was shot in.
- 4
Export candidates to another drive and sort them by capture time, which places recovered frames back inside the bracket.
Do not reshoot the bracket on the same card while the recovery is open, and do not let the camera renumber the folder. Both write to the medium. Deleting the surviving exposures to tidy up removes the numbering evidence you still need.
03 / Choose the method
Match the tool to the source
For stable, readable exFAT, NTFS and FAT16/FAT32 or uncompressed IMG, DD, RAW and BIN images.
Unconfirmed exports are marked .UNVERIFIED.
File Recovery Hero recovers whole files from readable exFAT, NTFS and FAT16/FAT32 media read-only, but nothing retrieves an exposure that stayed in the camera buffer and was never written. Merging what remains into one image is a task for your HDR software.
04 / Verify
Check the recovered content, not just its name
A recovered exposure belongs to the bracket when its capture time falls within a few seconds of its neighbours, its exposure value fits the step sequence, and it develops at full resolution. If the metadata places it elsewhere, it is a different frame that merely matched the file type.
Keep the source until two verified copies exist. One working preview is not enough.
Sources and technical references
FAQ
Questions about this recovery case
Can photo card with bracketed RAW or JPEG be recovered in this situation?+
A bracket is a fixed sequence of three, five or seven exposures, so a gap is easy to see and hard to explain. Before scanning anything, establish whether the missing exposure ever reached the card, because a frame the camera never wrote cannot be recovered from it. The result still depends on what remains readable on the source.
What should I avoid before scanning?+
Do not reshoot the bracket on the same card while the recovery is open, and do not let the camera renumber the folder.
Does scanning write to my memory card?+
Your memory card is only read. Nothing is saved to it.
How do I know whether the result is complete?+
A recovered exposure belongs to the bracket when its capture time falls within a few seconds of its neighbours, its exposure value fits the step sequence, and it develops at full resolution.