iPhone Camera not saving pictures

OK, I am posting this reply on every board where people are talking about iPhone cameras not working. No I do not have a fix but at the end you will see a twist to this all...

OK, I feel this is a file corruption of some sort. I have this problem with my iPhone. Took it to Apple and they replaced it. It worked like a charm in the store. Synced my phone at home...Boom. No photo taking ability. Tried the fix method described here and it worked until my next sync. There is a file of some sort that is part of my syncing that is corrupting the cameras ability to store.

Here is a twist. I just got the new iTunes 7.7, and a new iPhone 3G. I synced it up with all my music etc and guess what? I can't friggin take pictures. Want to know the weird thing? My old Edge iPhone that no longer has service is now taking photos. I have no idea what is going on here.
I have missed three vacations so far where I could not take photos with my iPhone. I would love to use the geo tagging of photos with my new 3G iPhone. Too bad I cant take photos. Also strangely I every time I sync my 3G phone it wants to do a back up. A three hour back up!

Does Apple monitor these threads? What is the fix Steve?

Scott

OK everyone. Others have mentioned th "/DCIM/.Misc folder solution" and I just wanted to point out that it also worked for me too.

Backstory: I've been having this problem for about 2 months. The same thing as everyone. After a big sync the problem started. The phone won't save the pictures. you just get a white outline where the picture would be and it will disappear entirely when you try to view it.

This is NOT a problem with your actual phone hardware. Exchanging phones at the apple store won't do anything.

There are workarounds discussed in other threads that will work temporarily but not permanently. I tried backing up and restoring multiple times. for instance the backup and restore but stop in the middle of the restore and take a picture method will work for a bit but not for long. You may have the same problem again soon.

I've found that the fastest and easiest way to fix this is to go in and delete the hidden .Misc folder from the phone. You don't need to restore or any of that jazz.



1. Backup/Sync your phone just-in-case i guess.

2. Download the trial of PhoneView: http://www.ecamm.com/mac/phoneview/ (there's other methods and programs you can use to go in and view & delete that folder but i didn't explore them.)

3. Launch PhoneView and in its preferences enable (Advanced Disc Mode)

4. In PhoneView Browse to the /Disc/DCIM/ folder and delete the entire .MISC folder.

That's it.

Thanks, Scott. The procedure you outlined worked for me. I had the issue on my first iPhone and I fixed it, but unfortunately I left it in a cab on Saturday night and never saw it again. Just this morning I got a new iPhone 3G and the camera problem reared it's ugly head again. I'm in the process of following the fix you described right now. Hopefully, it will work! Thanks again.

I've done that, but the .MISC folder keeps coming back!

Rick

I've read through this entire discussion and here's what i have to say:

I think a good way to prevent this from happening is to only upload small amounts of pictures to iPhoto at a time, per sync. Less than 300 is what I recommend. My dad has never had this problem, and he syncs his iPhone almost every day. I synced mine to my laptop [with osx leopard] for the first time today. I put 1200 or so pictures into iPhoto at once, saved them as one event and synced them with my phone. Took the phone out, tried to take some pictures, and bam— same problem everybody has.

I'm going to try deleting the .MISC file after downloading that demo of PhoneView onto my laptop. I'm concerned, however, about the .MISC file returning like Afterimages talked about.

-Zefr

I too am having this issue with the phone, long before this thread got long. I am about to try andyg's technique so i will reply with my success or failure. What is interesting to me is that people can't seem to figure out where the problem is coming from. Here is where it went wrong for me: it had nothing to do with the firmware at all...

Keep in mind I'm on a windows machine...

When importing pictures, it gives us windows users (mac people too??) the option to "erase after importing" with a box that by default, is unchecked. One day I figured "well I guess this would be convenient" because I was amassing a TON of pics and as we know, deleting them one by one is the pits...

So I checked the little box...big mistake. THAT is what is causing this. I think I read earlier that someone had the problem (on a mac) after unchecking a box to "keep orginals" which is the same as "erase after importing"

Just a thought. Anyone have two cents to add?? And I just cannot freakin' believe that this issue can't be fixed with a firmware update. Apple is IGNORING this thread alltogether, that has to be the only possible answer...

Apple does not monitor this forum. You have to bring it to there attention via support.

UPDATE:

It took me 4 hours but Andy Gadiel's method worked!

What I did:
exactly what he described...I will post again if this method doesn't stick. And DO NOT click the erase after importing option my fellow windows users...

I think I may have found what "triggers" this. I noticed that my last successfully saved image on my iPhone was IMG_0999.JPG.

I'm guessing that the bug in the iPhone is that the photo counter doesn't handle image numbers greater than 999.

After the restore procedure described here, I'm guessing the iPhone's image number counter goes back to 0001, but that the problem will reappear 998 images from now. 🙂

I have a new 3G 16 gig that does exactly the same thing , and its never been uploaded to nor even used its camera before. The Picture snaps and it looks like its storing it in the camera roll but the camera roll is empty and their are no Photo's in the Photo album. Its been synced al lot of times but never been restored. Its running 2.0.1 software, so its all up to date. WTH?

Problem solved with a complete restore. Must have been a software problem.

adny got right
follow that link you will see THE LIGHT

Repairing the Permissions was the fix for 2.1 here..
Thought I had a major Problem, but after setting Permissions to 777 in the
/var/mobile/Media/DCIM
All is Good again.. on OSX you can use muCommander for this also.

OK, it works now like a charme! I have also followed «acidargyle»'s advice and had my iPhone 2G 16GB 1.1.4 running in about 2 min. No Restore/Backup, no loss of settings, no hassle with SSH (where I constantly forget the passwords and have to lookup ip numbers). Very easy and straightforward this method:

BTW, the PhoneView Demo 2.0.6 that I downloaded is really cute. I'm thinking of buying this little app.

Thanks again for solving this problem.

Gary