tl;dr:
Check iCloud Photos: If you use iCloud Photos, it’s possible the photos are stored in iCloud and not on the device. If this is the case, you won’t see them when you connect your device to your computer. You’d need to download them from iCloud.com or use the iCloud for Windows software to access them on your computer.
Longer explanation
I recently connected an iPhone to a Windows computer in order to import photos to the pc. The DCIM folder on the iPhone device appeared empty (despite there being plenty photos on the iPhone).
I searched the web for a solution and found many fixes that did not work, including:
- Trust This Computer
- Restarting the device
- Update iTunes
- Try different USB Cable or port
Neither of these worked.
Working fix: Disable iCloud Photos
The actual issue was that the iPhone was configured to store photos on iCloud. When storing photos in iCloud, appearently the iPhone refuses to reveal the photos to the pc.
I could then go to icloud to download all the photos from there. However, for some reason the download form iCloud did not contain all the photos.
So I fixed it this way:
- On the iPhone, open Settings –> iCloud –> Photos
- Uncheck “Synchronize this iPhone”
- Now, it will ask if you want to transfer the originals from iCloud to iPhone. Click Yes to this.
- iPhone will now seemingly renable iCloud photos and start copy back all the originals from iCloud to the iPhone. This will take some time. Maybe several hours. You will not see any progress indication. Be sure to have plenty of free storage on the iPhone.
- When it eventually finishes, you can uncheck “Synchronize this iPhone” and it will uncheck without any warning about deleting photos.
After this, connect the iPhone to the pc using an USB cable. Now the photos should be visible in the DCIM folder.