Camera help please

Hi - I have a Lumix digital camera ( but am really a novice with all techo stuff ) I downloaded a group of photos onto iphoto file as I have done a few times, however, when I turned the camera back on later, it was empty!!

Idiot me - thought I had done something wrong. Fast forward to today when I went to get the latest photos printed in the shop, up on their screen is my deleted set along with the new ones.[:0]

When I put the card back in the camera, the missing ones are still missing????
How can they be showing on the shop printer and not showing on my camera?
Shop lady said never had it before and had no idea of problem.

Hoping one of you clever people can help me

I don't know anything about Lumix, but there are some cameras that will assign photos to little folders within the memory, so that's one possibility. 2. When you download photos, it's best to choose the copy to function on your computer, rather than the download as some cameras will dump all photos through download into your computer and clear the chip.
3. Even deleted photos can be recovered with the right software. The electronic signatures they leave, stay on the chip. A friend of mine helped me track down a stolen camera by this method, as the thief had swapped their manky camera (with cleared chip) and stolen ours. The "cleaned chip" was very enlightening and yielded photos of the thief! When confronted with the evidence, they gave up our camera and accepted their one back, all with suitable apologies.

With Lumix you do have a choice when downloading to NOT delete the camera photos on download to your computer. My camera is old so may not be what is current but worth looking into your settings? No idea really but a thought. How old is your camera?

Hi - My camera is only 18 months old. My computer has a box to tick if you want to delete photos after downloading - I hadn't ticked it. And I, as far as I know, didn't do anything different than the other times I've downloaded photos.
Still doesn't explain them being on the card, but unseen on camera.

Stikkibeek - Where and how would I find these folders if they are there?

We often get camera cards to print from in the shop, and often there are several folders on the card. I suspect when you download the camera, even if the 'do not delete after downloading' option is selected, the software automatically closes off the current folder and starts a new one for the next bunch of photos.
I dislike iPhoto very much as it is not at all intuitive; I have turned it off and use the software my camera came with (a Nikon, but I used to have a Lumix). But Stikkibeek is right, you can choose to just copy the files across like any other files, treat the camera card as a drive and with a Mac you can just 'drag and drop' into any folder on your hard drive. At home we always do this with a folder named with the year, drop the files into it (deleting them from the camera at the same time), rename all the pics we want to keep, and trash the rest. We rarely get prints made, but if we do I just copy them to a memory stick, or even back onto the camera card, and take it to the Warehouse or Kodak shop.

If you want really nice quality photos you should have the camera set on the best quality setting, and if you have a small memory card it will fill up pretty quickly so it's a good habit to get into emptying it regularly.