Nikon D800 NEFs ==> SubIFD Tags corrupted ==> Rewrite possible?

[Phil Harvey]

My guess is that the images are gone for good, but if you are lucky you may be able to extract JPG previews from the garbled data.  See this thread for a script and instructions on how to do this.

- Phil

[Ann]

Hi Phil,

This is all very interesting, thanks! We just realized that lots of our NEF files from Nikon D4s have been corrupted after importing them through Nikon Transfer 2.
Will there be a version that will support and can repair NEF files from the D4s?

Thank you for your help!

Ann

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Ann,

If you send me the necessary samples (see here), then I will add support for the D4s.

- Phil

[Ann]

Hi Phil,

Thank you so much, I have sent you the files.

Ann

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Ann,

I got the samples.  This is not the same type of corruption as that corrected by fix_corrupted_nef.  But I have seen a similar problem before with some D810 images.

With your images, it seems that only SubIFD2:CFARepeatPatternDim may be messed up.  The following command fixes this if necessary.  Please try this command on some of your corrupted images and let me know how it goes.

exiftool -subifd2:cfarepeatpatterndim="2 2" -if "$cfarepeatpatterndim eq '512 512'" FILE

where FILE is the name of one or more corrupt images or a directories containing corrupt images.  (The above quoting is for Windows.  Exchange the single and double quotes if you are on Mac or Linux.)

I think this should fix 5 out of the 6 samples you sent.  However, one seems to have more problems.  It looks salvageable, but it will be more work.  But before going to the extra effort, I want to see how the command works on your files.

- Phil

Edit: fixed missing "-" on -if option

[Ann]

Thanks a lot Phil. I tried the command on a few corrupted images and it seems to be working.

Ann

[Ann]

Hi Phil,

I have tried the command on a larger number of corrupted files now and it seems to be working on some of the files but not all. It seems to be working on the files shot with the D4s and not on the ones shot with a D810. Do you have a command for the D810 too or could it be a different kind of problem? Thank you so much for your help, very much appreciated!

Ann

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Ann,

Could be a different problem.  Send me a sample and I'll take a look.

- Phil

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Ann,

I got the sample.  I don't see anything obviously wrong with the metadata in this image.  Also, it seems to open just fine in Apple Preview and Nikon View NX2.

- Phil

[Ann]

Hi Phil,

Yes that works for me too however I can't open it in Nikon Capture NX2 (version 2.4.7), which now works for the other files (D4S). Any ideas?

Thanks,
Ann

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Ann,

Sorry, I don't have any other bright ideas.  If Nikon software support was any help at all I would suggest asking them.

- Phil

[Alan Clifford]

The D810 is not supported by capture nx2.

This page might be of interest:

http://nikonrumors.com/2014/10/25/another-alternative-solution-how-to-edit-nikon-d810-nefraw-files-with-capture-nx2-raw2nef-software.aspx/

[Phil Harvey]

The D810 is not supported by capture nx2.

Wow.

- Phil

[Hayo Baan]

The D810 is not supported by capture nx2.

Wow.

NX2 is dead, you'll have to use the new NX-D. I used to like NX2 quite a lot, but I've now switched to Adobe Camera Raw completely (NX-D just didn't work for my worklow). My productivity has actually gone up tremendously since then, so I'm glad I made the switch.

[Genex73]

I did want to drop by and thank you for the Nef Repair tool. I help out in the Adobe Photoshop forums and while I personally don't have this problem, I was able to get someone to your site to download it for the Mac and repair his D800 nefs.

Thanks for the great work.

Gene