Total File Size - All Your Images and Keep or Delete

[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.

 

[cliffwang]

I carry 80GB cards with me to those.

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

I guess 32GB x2 + 16GB x1

 

[cliffwang]

I believe I keep only about 20% of my images. I have about 100 to 200 GB photos, and some of them are from my old camera jpg files. That's already too many files for me. Thus, deleting images is very important for me. Here is how I usually do nowadays.

1. Take photos.
2. Move them to my computer and decide which files I will keep.
3. Move the files I want to keep to my storage server
4. Do easy process for the files I need to share or keep for myself from lightroom
5. Output those files in JPG file format and store in a JPG subfolder
6. Synchronize the storage server with backup drive

 

[tpatana]

I carry 80GB cards with me to those.

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

I guess 32GB x2 + 16GB x1

Yup, didn't mean one card 80GB, but total combined.

 

[agierke]

I carry 80GB cards with me to those.

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

i currently have 108 GB CF cards in my bag at all times. if i have to shoot 2 weddings in a weekend i come very close to using every card i have. if i shoot multiple jobs throughout the week, a card used gets rotated out of the bag until i know that it is dowloaded and backed up (not always able to keep up with downloading immediately after a job)

 

[FatDaddyJones]

I hear ya. I just got a new 64gb lexar cf card, and with shooting lots of video plus a few raw shots to boot, it doesn't take long to fill up. I have a few 16 gb cards but I just get tired of swapping them out so often when I'm in the middle of shooting.

 

[cayenne]

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).

Interesting, I'd also been coached by some more experienced photogs I've been talking with and picking their brains, that they said they never hook their cameras directly with USB to the computers to transfer pics...that they only did it when necessary for firmware upgrades.

Not sure how much of that was superstition....but, I figured a card reader is easy to use, often faster, I have a multiple card intake on mine, so I can plug in a CF and SD card at the same time and start copying off from both....and get back to shooting while those are copying off.

The card reader seems to transfer a bit faster than directly from the camera so far for me....anyone else experience that?

Cayenne

 

[FatDaddyJones]

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).

Interesting, I'd also been coached by some more experienced photogs I've been talking with and picking their brains, that they said they never hook their cameras directly with USB to the computers to transfer pics...that they only did it when necessary for firmware upgrades.

Not sure how much of that was superstition....but, I figured a card reader is easy to use, often faster, I have a multiple card intake on mine, so I can plug in a CF and SD card at the same time and start copying off from both....and get back to shooting while those are copying off.

The card reader seems to transfer a bit faster than directly from the camera so far for me....anyone else experience that?

Cayenne

I'm sure what each of us do or don't do is according to our own good or bad experiences with things in the past. Most are probably over-generalizations. Even though I don't use card readers because I lost four cards full of photos in card readers, I'm sure that not everyone has had the same experience. Otherwise, you wouldn't see card readers being sold everywhere. The same goes for the USB transfer from the people you've talked to. I've never had a problem transferring my pics via USB. The point is, pick what works best for you.

Some card readers can utilize the speed of higher speed cards, but there is always a bottleneck at the slowest common denominator - whether it's the camera, USB, card, card reader, HDD, etc.

 

[PeterJ]

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).

Interesting, I'd also been coached by some more experienced photogs I've been talking with and picking their brains, that they said they never hook their cameras directly with USB to the computers to transfer pics...that they only did it when necessary for firmware upgrades.

Not sure how much of that was superstition....but, I figured a card reader is easy to use, often faster, I have a multiple card intake on mine, so I can plug in a CF and SD card at the same time and start copying off from both....and get back to shooting while those are copying off.

The card reader seems to transfer a bit faster than directly from the camera so far for me....anyone else experience that?

I've always assumed pros do it that way for the reasons you mention, plus buying multiple card readers is pretty economical if you want to download a few CF cards at the same time. And they are often swapping multiple cards anyway for redundancy / capacity reasons.

Being an amateur I'm not too concerned with speed so use the USB path. Most of the time I'm only using a single card and my reasoning is the USB port is probably more robust and cheaper / easier to repair than a CF card slot if it does fail. Plus while I have a 5D3 now previously my cameras were single slot, so a broken USB port would give me the 'Plan B' of using a reader until it was repaired.