What is the best practice for saving iPhone video & pictures?

Question

I have an iPhone 4S and have it backed up via iCloud, Photostream turned on, and iTunes sync over WiFi enabled. Unfortunately, my daughter (2 yrs) got a hold of the iPhone and started deleting photos, which then deleted them from pretty much every place those pics/videos were. By the time I realized the data was delete, the phone was synced and there was no way to restore the data that I know of (suggestions here would be helpful as well!).

What's the proper/suggested way to "dump" the photos and videos from the iPhone to a more permanent store, such as on my MacMini's local drive?

Solution

My recommendation for backing up your iPhone pictures and/or videos is to:

1. Connect your iPhone to your MacMini
2. Open iPhoto
3. Click on your iPhone device ( left column ) and choose to import any or all media taken from your camera roll.

Note: You will have the option here to delete photos imported from your camera roll if desired. This is my current method of backing up /importing all of my media taken from my camera roll on my 4S. iPhoto also has a nice method of creating albums as well.

Photo recovery suggestion: If you performed a data backup of your phone with the photos on it, you can try to restore that backup to obtain those pictures back. ( NOTE this will remove any changes to your contacts, media, etc that you have made since your last backup ! )

It seems if your iPhone has already been synced with iCloud, you cannot recover those pictures from iCloud

Comments

[slhck]

Is copying them from the Image Capture app not enough?

[Rob]

Not sure. I'll check that out.

[slhck]

I've reopened that question. Smartphones interfacing with a computer are not off topic here.