iPhone 3GS Camera/Camera Roll Bug

If restoring your iPhone with iTunes as a new iPhone or not from your iPhone's backup does not resolve this, you can call AppleCare at (800) 694-7466, or make an appointment at an Apple store if there is one nearby.

I have seen this. Did you get it resolved? How?

I just discovered this problem. I used the 3GS camera last week through-out europe without issue ( thank god). Problem started this morning after last upload of photos. Interestingly, new photos I take now are still on the camera and can be uploaded. The camera does not seem to know they are there (shows that no photos have been taken).

Switching between video mode then back to camera mode corrected the problem, but only until I left the camera app and came back. Upon coming back, the photos had " disappeared" reporting again that there were no photos in the camera.

Will try re-store later in the day whne I have the time.

I've never had a major problem from my original iPhone for the year and a half that I used it. I was really upset when I got my 3GS mainly for the upgraded camera and video and it failed me at the worst time. Right now I'm in Cancún México on vacation. The camera has worked fine until now. It actually worked right up to when we were descending over México on the flight! Maybe the bug is location related? Anyone else have the problem while traveling? I'm really glad to hear that the files are still recoverable. But what horrible timing!

Are you basically saying that if we have this problem then the only fix is to lose all of our existing data and basically start from scratch with a "new" iPhone... that's Bull$hit and Apple should provide a real fix to this problem.

This is not what I basically said. Read it again. It was a direct response to what the OP provided, which was this.

I have done a recent restore of the device. I also restored it and NOT resynced it or restored my info (so like brand new, but activated) and it still will not show pics/vids that I take with it now.

And my reply was this.

If restoring your iPhone with iTunes as a new iPhone or not from your iPhone's backup does not resolve this, you can call AppleCare at (800) 694-7466, or make an appointment at an Apple store if there is one nearby.

Whine and rant elsewhere.

Oh fine... sorry to have offended you and assumed you said something you didn't. Just a bit disheartened to have spent over $300 to buy a new iPhone only to have such an obvious problem (that others have had) pop up and make my iPhones camera completely useless. Most of the "solutions" people have provided are to restore the iphone as a new phone and not restore your back up (a backup of a iPhone that had a working Camera Roll, mind you). Clearly there is something that the 3.0 software did that broke functionality for more than just me.

It would be nice if there was a way to do a partial restore from the backup... then I could just not restore the corrupted Cameral Roll stuff and still get all my previous text messages and application data.

Can't do it now, but later today or this weekend I'll see about doing a new backup of my old iPhone and see if I can restore from that without destroying my camera functionality. (no thumbnails and can't take still pictures or video, can't delete any pictures either).

Right now, it seems Apple is partly responsible for this <Edited by Host> and hopefully they will issue a fix, along with fixing the SMS vulnerability.

Hi all,

I think I have a fix using Phone View without deleting the DCIM files etc. So far it is working and haven't had any problems with iPhoto. Going to go out and do some extensive testing soon.

OK so here is the not so simple fix.

1.connect iPhone 3G/3GS
2. open Phone View
3. goto DCIM folder than .MISC folder
4. find "info.plist" and double click. Phone view will transfer the file to your documents folder. Double click it.
5. It should open with plist viewer. If not then you will have to download the iphone developer SDK
6. There will be two columns when you open this file in plist viewer one that says "key" and the other "value"
7. The "value" column the one that has the file counts for each of the picture folders in DCIM (starting with "100Apple, 102Apple, etc.") is the one you need to modify.
8. So in Phone View goto the picture folders (starting with "100Apple, 102Apple, etc.") and check the last number of the image file (example "IMG_999.jpg") in each folder and see if it matches the "value" column in the Plist viewer. Do not go with the amount of pics for the "value" column number, go with the number in the pic name. (I hope thats clear Change each number in the "value" columns to the last number in each folder.
9. After your done save it.
10. Then replace the info.plist on the iPhone with the one you just modified using phone view.
11. test it.

So far it's working and no problems yet. I checked the info.plist file and so far it is adding the pictures properly with the correct number. So it should work. Keep your fingers crossed. Hope Apple fixes this soon.

Ray

I tried this as you described and now not only does it not work, but my photos application keeps crashing even though I made a copy of the original plist and put it back in after trying your fix.

What happened?
I have an iPhone 3Gs 32Gb with 6231 photos in my library in 26 folders including the camera roll. the plist only showed eleven folders of 100Apple, 101Apple etc. only the first folder had two photos showing and the last folder showed three photos (which was my camera roll). I redid the value for only the ones that showed image files in them and left the other folders as "999". should I have put those at "000"? Why is my Photos keep crashing?

No you should not put those values at 000.

So let me understand this, you redid your "value" column to match the last number of the pic name not the number of pic files in each folder right? Example: If the last pic in folder (102Apple) was "IMG_2098.jpg" but your "value" column read 999 for that folder you would have changed the "value" column to read "98". The bug is that the "value" column is erroneously reporting that the maximum number of pictures which is 999 has been reached for that folder even though only 98 photos, videos were taken. So if you change the value to match the photos numbers then it should work.

Also in each camera roll folder 102Apple the third number corresponds with the first number of the pic file name so: 102Apple should start with IMG_2001.jpg, IMG_2002.jpg, etc. 103Apple should start with IMG_3001.jpg, IMG_3002.jpg, etc.

Please let me know if this fixes this.

It should work.

Message was edited by: rainald