Image Capture Deleted Files Location?

Hi Apple Community,

Hoping a very savvy Apple user might be able to point be in the right direction.

I used MacOs' native Image Capture to import a large amount of photos (jpg format) and videos to my iPhone 12 mini, running the latest 16.4.1 iOS. I imported them from my iPhone to my iMac (24”/M1/2021/16GB/13.3.1).

Unfortunately, I had the “delete after import” box checked and when I went to see the results, Image Capture showed a 3-4 errors ( I didn't take a screenshot of the codes) and a unable to complete operation message. All the photos were gone from my iPhone AND none to be found in my Mac.

I’ve tried a bunch of photo recovery apps and although they have found some very old photos on both the iPhone and iMac, none of them are the recent ones that were trying to be imported.

I've tried looking in the /private/tmp and the /private/var folder, doing a search for images in finder. Nothing.

iCloud was for photos was turned off, and the most recent backup I have is pre-trip, so no way of recouping through a backup.

They are not in my Recently Deleted folder (are they there just not visible?) on my iPhone and there are no photos in my Bin (again, possible that they are hidden?).

Is the Image Capture an "all or none" import, meaning that if some of the photos are not able to be imported then the whole process is a fail, but still deleting all of the photos from the iPhone?

Any idea what I might be able to do? Where to look?

Many thanks for any help.