Iphone 4 stuck in recovery mode?

so i went on vacation to europe. the iphone was used as my camera most of the time. so the day before i flew back the phone decide to put itself in recovery/dfu mode. I REALLY dont want to lose the 300 pictures that i took with it. ive tried all the resets (holding of home and power ons). Ive tried different programs that are suppose to kick it out of the recovery mode but they just get stuck on the apple logo and do nothing. I have yet to find a program that can get to the pictures so that i can save them and then restore the phone. I dont have a problem restoring the phone. its just i dont want to lose the pics. I do not konw the firmware version on the phone also. any help ? thanks