DESPERATE iphone 5 backup missing in iCloud

Your photos would be saved in Photo Stream not iCloud.

You could try a 3rd party app like iExplorer to see if you can salvage any photos.

You don't restore from a backup in icloud via itunes, you have to wipe the phone and then it will ask when you start the phone if you want to backup from icloud (don't connect the phone to your PC/Mac)

blueroom said:

Your photos would be saved in Photo Stream not iCloud.

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Yes the photos would be in iCloud. If you have it turned on to backup the camera roll (default) then all the pictures and videos will be there when you restore your phone.

sbsmithjax said:

Thanks you, but I didn't have Photo stream turned on. The last time I did a restore, thought, maybe 8 months ago, it did return my photos.

The issue is that I can't seem to get that backup from 9pm last night to appear????

Thanks,
Stephen

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Photo stream is not needed for the photos to be backed up as part of the backup. Unfortunately I don't have any help for your specific issue. I might be misunderstanding what is happening though.
If your phone is telling you when it was last backed up that is an iCloud backup. You can go in to your iCloud settings on your phone to see what backups are stored there. That backup would not be on your computer, and your computer would only show the most recent backup directly to it (you plugged into your computer and hit backup in iTunes).
When you reset a phone you will be given the option to restore one of your iCloud backups. That does not require connecting to a computer.