Total File Size - All Your Images and Keep or Delete

[Mt Spokane Photography]

36GB seems like nothing to me, I use a 64gb compact flash card for one days shooting, and have a 12 TB NAS.  With the low cost of storage, there is no need to throw out images that you might want in a few years.  I bought a 3TB drive this xmas to use for a 2nd drive on my new PC.

[camlars]

Storage cost doesn't factor into the decision at all for me, storage is cheap.

I rarely delete photos in camera since it is slower than deleting them on the computer, and sometimes you can't really tell if it is a keeper until you see it on a bigger screen.

I try to delete at least some of the weaker images as I go through them the first time since I think it saves time. Cmd-Delete instead of next doesn't really take that much longer.

I too would prefer having 10,000 images some years down the road rather than 100,000.

[cayenne]

Memory is cheap. You said it yourself. To me, it's not worth deleting a single frame. If I take a shot that's not worth keeping, it gets deleted in camera before I transfer the files to computer.

Just curious....I'd been told that for longer life of your memory cards, that it was best to NOT do maniuplations, deletions from the camera to individiual files on the cards while in camera.

That is was best to unload all your images from a session(s) with your card reader to your comuter, and once done, you reformat the cards in the CAMERA to totally erase them to be ready for next shoots.

Thoughts on this? Myth or Fact?

TIA,

cayenne

[camlars]

i guess you do no keywording?
otherwise it would make no difference to delete the junk when you do keywording.

Exactly! I would  say even without doing any keywording that as long as you actually look at the photos after transferring them to your computer it doesn't take any extra time to hit delete instead of next.

[joshmurrah]

~400GB here, that doesn't include TIFFs and whatnot from star trails, that's just the RAWs/jpgs.

I keep 'em in a folder on an iMac, have timemachine running with an external drive, with a 2nd drive in a firesafe that I swap around once in a while.

I use Crashplan for cloud backups.  Took about two months to do the initial sync but syncs quickly overnight now that I'm in sync.

[extremeinstability]

Memory is cheap. You said it yourself. To me, it's not worth deleting a single frame. If I take a shot that's not worth keeping, it gets deleted in camera before I transfer the files to computer.

Just curious....I'd been told that for longer life of your memory cards, that it was best to NOT do maniuplations, deletions from the camera to individiual files on the cards while in camera.

That is was best to unload all your images from a session(s) with your card reader to your comuter, and once done, you reformat the cards in the CAMERA to totally erase them to be ready for next shoots.

Thoughts on this? Myth or Fact?

TIA,

cayenne

It's probably a bit of both.  Generally if you work something more it won't last as long as otherwise, but with that it's probably a big none issue.  Something else will screw up a card first.  I've only had one card fail the last 10 years. 

Of course now I notice the card reader comment.  I have always done mine via usb cable/camera to the computer.  I think taking the card out, putting it in a card reader then back out and back to the camera will do more harm than deleting images on the card ever will.  I've always been paranoid about that weakening a card that I just always have a big enough card each time and never take it out of the camera and use the usb route(till the usb port failed on my T2i anyway lol).

[vab3]

I'm a hobbyist who lost a portable hard drive a few years ago, so now I prefer at least two physical backups of RAW files, and one JPG on-line. (Luckily, I still had all my jpgs on-line). 

However, the whole process taught my how much I care about my tens of thousands of pictures that didn't make the cut.  Not much. You have to trust yourself.  If you determine that ten images sum up the weekend at the lake, then so be it.

First of all, as soon as I upload, I delete anything that is out of focus, duplicate, or uninteresting.

I keep a year of RAW photos on my laptop, and periodically copy them all to a portable drive.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robocopy - great tool).  I upload JPGs and share them with my relatives.  The result is I generally have 3 copies -- 2 RAW and one JPG offsite. 

At the end of the year I make copies of all my favorite RAW files from the year, and back those up both to the portable drive and offsite.  I also upload new copies of the favorites online as JPGS.  Friends and family enjoy the 'year in review' album. 

From then on I only worry about the favorites.  The bulk RAW for the year are removed from the laptop, and the ones on the portable drive are relegated to folders that can be deleted after a few years.  Occasionally, I purchase a new (bigger) external hard drive, copy everything, and archive the old one until I feel like purging.   

[extremeinstability]

Glad to see some others that are pretty big on purging and deleting.  I realized a bit ago probably the biggest reason I'm so bad at it.  I'm so anal on putting the best of the images forward whenever I do anything. I think, I have to whittle down so it's easier to find/sort/know the best(in my mind) for this or that use.  The other thing that I think drives what amounts to being the opposite of a hoarder is, I really really really hate doing headlines, captions, and keywords for stock sites.  Having far far less to screw with makes that a lot easier.  Yeah many are similar, but at least as far as keywords are concerned, it's often not as easy as simply highlighting all in a basic group and "appending metadata" for the keywords.  If I delete the piss out of things before I get to that point, it's all the easier to accomplish that and move on.  Those are the biggest reasons I delete away.  The third would probably be, it sorta feels healthy to just let go of some of it lol.  I always think about later on down the road in life, I don't need an ocean of images, a lake or pond will do.  Maybe that would have been a better way to look at this/do this post.  When you are at the end of your photography year's rope, how many photos will be enough.  I'm shooting for a best of collection I guess.  If I "only" have 5,000 of those after another 30 years that should be more than enough. 

[agierke]

up until recently i have kept everything. i am currently running 5 TBs worth of drives and though storage is cheap its become a hassle that i just dont want to deal with anymore.

the biggest culprit for me is weddings. i did about 100+ weddings as a second shooter and kept everything so that i could look through later for portfolio reasons (i didnt have to do any editing at the time, just shoot and drop off the raws to the 1st shooter). well, i never got around to going through all those weddings so now my "pile" is enormous. i'm ready to unload the bulk of those stored shots its just a matter of finding a few weeks to sort through it all.

i expect its going to get much worse as i take on more and more weddings myself. at least with my own weddings i edit it down to 1000 shots per.

the real dilemma is that digital files just don't last that long. will my digital files be around in 20 years? i have already had files shot in the early 2000's become corrupted and hence are unusable. i need to identify my all time best shots (the ones that will stand the test of time) and figure out a hard copy archival solution to store them.

anyone store prints of their best shots for archiving purposes or even better yet get their digital files on 4x5 chrome? an expensive proposition but is there a better way to ensure that my best images will still be around after i pass?

[extremeinstability]

That's a good point on corrupted images.  I've always sorta wondered what the best route is to keep backups with that possibility in mind.  I've feared something gets corrupted and then when I back up, I write over in all the back up locations using a corrupted file.  Suppose the key would be when backing up, doing it once in each location and not writing over the first ones.  Not so simple to have several places when we are talking 5TB obviously!  But even for my whittled down 36 gigs I'm wondering the best safest route to prevent that corrupted issue.  I guess if you browse through them all in like Bridge as you are deleting down you could see if anything had gotten corrupted on the main harddrive.  Course that might have to include purging bridge cache and letting it make new previews.  Just this being brought up again now makes me want to only add to the back up drives each year and not re-write over the older years.  Because it would be pretty damn annoying to get a corrupted file on the main pc, then screw up all the backup locations by simply re-writing with a bad file. 

[FatDaddyJones]

Memory is cheap. You said it yourself. To me, it's not worth deleting a single frame. If I take a shot that's not worth keeping, it gets deleted in camera before I transfer the files to computer.

Just curious....I'd been told that for longer life of your memory cards, that it was best to NOT do maniuplations, deletions from the camera to individiual files on the cards while in camera.

That is was best to unload all your images from a session(s) with your card reader to your comuter, and once done, you reformat the cards in the CAMERA to totally erase them to be ready for next shoots.

Thoughts on this? Myth or Fact?

TIA,

cayenne

It's probably a bit of both.  Generally if you work something more it won't last as long as otherwise, but with that it's probably a big none issue.  Something else will screw up a card first.  I've only had one card fail the last 10 years. 

Of course now I notice the card reader comment.  I have always done mine via usb cable/camera to the computer.  I think taking the card out, putting it in a card reader then back out and back to the camera will do more harm than deleting images on the card ever will.  I've always been paranoid about that weakening a card that I just always have a big enough card each time and never take it out of the camera and use the usb route(till the usb port failed on my T2i anyway lol).

I've had four cards that either failed completely or corrupted some of the images on the card. (All were Kingston - I use Lexar and Sandisk only now) Each time it happened was in an external card reader while trying to transfer files to the computer. Each time it was a different card reader and different computer. What good is high speed transfer if your pictures are all corrupted? I use USB from the camera now exclusively. (Sure wish the 5D3 had USB 3.0 - that was just dumb oversight on Canon's part) I delete photos immediately if they don't turn out just right, and I've never had a card fail in the camera while doing it. I don't know if it's the best thing to do for the card's sake, but from my experience, I'll take deleting on camera/USB transfer over a card reader any day.

One other word of advice - Never plug your camera or card into a device that is not properly grounded. That can corrupt your card and fry your camera. It's not a big problem in the US, but when shooting overseas there are lots of places that don't have grounded power outlets.

[John Thomas]

My two cents:

1. Do not do anything else on your cards (neither edit, neither nothing...) just download them on the PCs. The NAND cells have a finite lifetime (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory#Memory_wear) and controllers from camera or USB readers are way to simple to provide advanced techniques like wear leveling, GC etc.

2. There ain't such thing like 5TB disk. WD will have them but in late 2013 (AFAIK - see http://www.afterdawn.com/news/article.cfm/2012/12/05/wd_5tb_hard_drives_coming_next_year). The products like the one to be found  at http://www.amazon.com/LaCie-301355U-5big-Network-Drive/dp/B001IB10CW are in fact a NAS with a RAID card in it using 5 (five) disks in RAID 0 or other config (RAID 0 not recommendable at all for data safety imho).

HTH

[tpatana]

When I shoot my hobby sport, I usually get 60-70GB on ~7h shooting. I carry 80GB cards with me to those. 2011 a big competition I shot 180GB in 3 days. Typically <25% keepers, <5% make the editing board, 3-4% make the final cut. Don't know for pros, but I assume that's quite normal.

[FatDaddyJones]

I carry 80GB cards with me to those.

80GB memory cards? Never seen that. CF? SD?

[RLPhoto]

I currently have 1,750GB of RAW files from Film Scans, 10D, Rebel XSI, 5Dc, 7D, & 5D3 cameras. Lightroom handles it fantastically and I can easily view progress from camera to camera.