Missing photos from your iPhone camera roll?

I've seen a few comments lately about photos missing from the iPhone's camera roll.  This was a problem documented last August whereby if you had more than 10,000 photos on your iPhone, then any photo named IMG_10000 or higher would be invisible in the camera roll.  Now I'm not sure if this is still a problem with the latest version of iOS 3.x or even iOS 4, but a previous reader commented at the time, that when you reached image IMG_11526 the next shot IMG_11527 would become visible.  Now whilst this may mean having to shoot another 1,500 photos, which is a lot, there were the possible alternative options.

1. Sync your iPhone to backup and copy all photos off your camera roll using your computer.
2. Use a directory browser such as PhoneView for Mac, iPhone Browser for PC or SSH to delete these folders.
3. Now just take a picture and you’ll see it shows up in the camera roll.

Note from Editor: When this fix was reported last year, there were mixed results, so anyone trying this does so at their own risk :)

Original source: Apple iPhone School

Comments

[Jennyland]

I've found a similar issue whereby the camera roll keeps the images in the proper place, but when I sync with my computer/iTunes at home, I have to locate by the date the picture was taken because the phone is recycling image numbers that were deleted (so if I sort by file name, it appears that there are pictures missing, even though I know they're there) :/

[Kert Gartner]

I had an issue when I synced to my new iPhone 4 where all my photos on my camera roll showed up out of order. I had to remove them all, and sync them through iPhoto in order to get them in the right order. Total PITA, but it worked. I also noticed that it was using older filenames of photos I had deleted as space for new photos, so everything was all over the place.

I wiped the phone, and started the iPhone 4 camera roll from scratch. It's working great now :)

[Stephan]

Syncing your iPhone through iTunes doesn't back up your photos. You need to use iPhoto or (my favorite) Image Capture (both should be preloaded on your Mac; you can also use pull them off through an Explorer window in Windows).

[Len]

This happened to my 3G (pre-iOS4 update) after I used the Diptic app and saved processed photos to my camera roll. Whole sections of thumbs were blacked out. That was at photo number 9913 (IMG_9913)...so it hadn't reached the proverbial turn of the century.

I synced and blindly selected the blacked out areas in hopes of recovering them to my iPhoto. I worked, but the thumbs were never restored. I reported it to the developer. No answer or reply.

Then I deleted the corrupted thumbs and stopped using Diptic. I now have an iPhone 4.

I'm well past the that 10000-mark, and no problems.

I'm a little too cautious... I suppose the Diptic app is not the problem.

[Jennyland]

@Len: I've had that happen to me, too, but not while using Diptic. I think PICtone was the common culprit for a while, until I (think I) figured out what the problem was. I was shutting down the app just a few moments before the app was finished saving the image to my camera roll. When my patience exceeded my anticipation, it never happened again ♥

[Music]

WTF is one doing with more than 10.000 pics on his iPhone..?

[B]

I don't think you have to have more than 10.000 pics on your phone, it's the that you have SHOT 10.000 pics. So when you reach that number, regardless if you have deleted them all from your phone, you still don't see any pics. That's what I've read somewhere.