Hello!
Cameras usually appear as another flash drive when they are connected. Perhaps it dumping pix when it's connected is just a feature of that particular camera. I lost my Coolpix's cable ages ago, so I can't test that feature. I just look work with my pix from the storage card.
Since this happened on a Linux box (ext4 partition), Recuva won't help in this instance - you'd need a Linux-based undelete utility.
Note to self: Find a Linux undelete utility BEFORE I need one...
73 DE N4RPS
Rob