Thank you all for the information you've given me, on both my probable errors in picture taking and that the pictures might still be retrievable.

I'll take a look at the software for the camera and see about the memory thing from the camera that Nihil suggested, but beyond that I'm not going to bother.

I thought the process might have been easier, like they're hidden now and to unhide them I'd do something, or input some command into the Run box, or do something in the registry... or some such.

I don't feel the need to satisfy my husband's mild curiosty of why the pictures were ruined to the point of paying someone in order to retrieve them or taking time to download and install some other program free or otherwise, especially when there seems to be no guarantee they're still there anyway. It's been about a month.

Still it's good information know, in the event something important does get damaged or inadvertantly deleted.