Call it an artist favorite art piece and charge 10,000 for a wall print... case solved. ermmm.... i'd vote on the side of corrupted file... I haven't seen it happen to me, but depending on the card used, last time since a format (not just deleting pictures), and other factors... 1 out of thousands of images, i wouldn't lose sleep... every image... then rise hell.
If it was shot in RAW, then the JPEG thumbnail should at least partially answer the question:
- if it's the same, then it's camera (CMOS or other electronics error, like voltage fluctuation)
- if it's ok, then the RAW is corrupted
BTW I'm not sure and haven't found and answer, if cr2 file provides at least checksum parity check. If it doesn't then it's really strange (as for cr2, not the photo).
Maybe the photo was made at some nuclear plant and you were lucky to catch some high speed particle, which changed one bit somewhere in the green colour factor multiplier;) I've read somewhere, that the most often reason for damaging computer memory modules was cosmic radiation. Just landed vehicle on Mars has the very slow processor for the same reason - to avoid cosmic radiation, which might damage it. There is a modified version of Power PC 750, which is like 70 times slower than processors in modern mobile phones but it's resistant to cosmic radiation. One bad photo is not the reason for changing the camera. If the second one occurs, then change the camera, or place where you make photos
