rlboyce wrote:Keep in mind that moisture in the air might also be an enemy to non-waterproof cameras in caves. Another caver and I went into a new cave and took some pictures while surveying, and when he went to upload the pictures to his computer a few days later he found the card could not be read. This could have been a result of something other than moisture, but I have no trouble envisioning moisture penetrating the camera housing and wreaking havoc on the internal components, including the memory card. A waterproof case such as an otterbox may not save you if you choose to take the camera out of the box.
If that happens again there are a number of good file recovery programs available cheap. Some are freeware, that's my kind of cheap. I've used a few of them in the past to recover and reformat when memory cards were still expensive. Sometime back I found an SD card trampled into the mud in a cave. I took it home, rinsed it in clean water, let it dry under a desk lamp overnight and as I suspected it would not mount. I used Glary Utilities or Handy Recovery to recover the pics from it. Unfortunately no one recognized the people on the card so I was never able to return it. Physically the card had dents in it and was bent slightly so I just pitched it.