Image Capture

A couple of things, in case you haven't tried them:

You may have to take a new picture with your camera, but you should be able to figure out something close to the file names of the lost images. If a file is IMG_3358.mov, for instance, you can do a search in Spotlight for just the beginning, IMG_33, and maybe find some similar pictures to see where they are:

I got img_3351, img_3352, etc. Spotlight only searches the current System Library, so if you have several libraries you may have to try one at a time. Or, if you have the app Power Photos, it will search all your libraries at once.

If the pictures are not in a Photos Library, you can use the Finder search in a similar way.

If you click on a file, Finder will show the path to that file at the bottom of the window.

Neither of these checks the trash-- so you should certainly look there!

The photos you imported should appear at the bottom of the "Imports" album in Photos, when you are viewing your system Photos Library in Photos.

Perhaps Photos has currently opened a different library. Quit Photos, if it is running, then launch it again while holding down the options key, until you are seeing the Library Chooser dialog. Is there more than one library shown? If yes, try them all in turn and look for your photos.

Image Capture will only delete the photos after importing them, if the checkmark for "Delete after Import" is set. By default this checkmark should be turned off.

Image Capture by default imports to ~/Pictures. But if you have changed that, then maybe you could try a dummy import and check where it is set to go. Or search for newish image files via Spotlight or some 3rd party tool.

If the date on the images is set wrong they could be almost anywhere. Try going to the all photos view and look at the *first* entries.