Do you keep EVERY picture you take?

[ChrisBlaze]

Just wondering if you keep every pic you take, or pick the best ones.

[tekkie]

nope, alot of the times I take multiple pictures because I am still learning and then I usually just keep the best couple

[79TAKid]

I usually keep ALL of them, thats why I have no space on my 2 hard drives :o:lol:

[thekid24]

not every shot I take is a winner.Plus once I burn them onto a cd for the costumer I delete them off the PC

[J T]

I usually keep ALL of them, thats why I have no space on my 2 hard drives :o:lol:

40 gigs worth of pictures over the last year on mine. I think it's time to start backing them up!

[runninmann]

Just deleted 12 of 26.

[liza]

I probably have 100GB of images on mine right now, but I shoot for pay and sometimes shoot 1K images per week, deleting about 20% of those. I've been burning mine to CD's and uploading them to online galleries before deleting them from the hard drive. More than likely, I'll soon invest in external hard drives to store wedding and portrait images since the price has gotten so cheap.

[gjl711]

It depends on what I am shooting. If out and about hiking the woods looking for that one nature shot, my keep to delete ratio is low and I can get rid of nearly all I took except for a few. If trying new technique or experimenting, my keeper rate again is low. If it's an event with family and friends, I keep any that are in focus and closer to properly exposed so my keep rate is quite high. If I add them all together, I took about 4000 pics last year and a quick check shows that I have 2142 so my keep rate is about %50.

[SuzyView]

I have PSE5.0 and they have a great way to check the pictures you want to put on your hard drive. I don't go through the shots every time, but when I do, I find I keep about 80% of the whole. Can't save everything, only have 2 external hard drives. :) I also take around 500 shots a week on a regular basis, not as many as Liza, but still, can get really full on the hard drive with the 5D and 20D. I go through all my CF cards sometimes in one shoot, that's 8 GB's of stuff.

[calicokat]

any blurry or soft shots get chopped right away, then its more technical. I keep about a third overall, from there only a select few make it to the web and even fewer get printed

[Titus213]

Review in Bridge with a slide show. There are things I snap that even CS3 can't fix.... I delete them immediately.

[John Nicholas]

No way just wouldn't make a whole lot of sense some don’t even make it out of the camera.

[liza]

No way just wouldn't make a whole lot of sense some don’t even make it out of the camera.

You know, maybe if I chimped more often it would cut down on my process time. Perhaps I should follow your lead! :)

[cdifoto]

You know, maybe if I chimped more often it would cut down on my process time. Perhaps I should follow your lead! :)

I do the same. I chimp a LOT.

[steved110]

I delete OOF, camera shake, crappy composition, and those odd pictures where someone is in the middle of blinking and looks like they are in a coma, that sort of thing! and the odd outright cockup like ISO 3200 in broad daylight or forgot to set the flash or wrong Av/Tv values. I do a lot of that....

But I do keep a lot of crap too. ;)

[Steve Parr]

I used to keep only the "good" ones, but have since opted for the more time saving option of just dumping everything to an external hard drive. When I burn CD's, though (as a back-up for the hard-drive), I usually burn only the "keepers"...

[Mark_Cohran]

I archive all the photos except the one that are clearly out of focus or unsalvageable.

Mark

[TomPierce]

Once, in a fit of artistic frustration, I threw out several hundred negatives that I was not satisfied with.

Now, many years later, I *really* wish I had them back. Even if they were not the greatest photos ever taken, they were part of my life / art at the time. And some of them were photos of a New Orleans that will never exist again.

Keep them all. You truly can never go back to that moment again.

[Eagle]

My keeper rate is approximately 60% since getting the 20D 13 months ago. Just installed a new 250gb drive yesterday for picture storage, 225gb free right now.

[thomascanty]

I certainly don't use them all (a very small fraction, actually), but I never delete any. CD's, DVD's and external hard drives are cheap enough to make it unnecessary. I have more than 400Gb of photos backed up now.

[birdstrike]

I certainly don't use them all (a very small fraction, actually), but I never delete any. CD's, DVD's and external hard drives are cheap enough to make it unnecessary. I have more than 400Gb of photos backed up now.

Ditto here. If I take a picture of the floor, or something, I'll trash it in camera. Anything that makes it to the computer stays (don't ask me why). I've got many badly OOF shots triple backed up on three hard drives just waiting to be burned to DVD.

[Shutter22]

I'm not sure which to choose.

All the pictures I upload to my computer I keep, but I chimp a lot. Any down time I have while I'm out shooting I look through my shots carefully and trash quite a few.

[SoaringUSAEagle]

I do not keep every one...

[Evan Idler]

I keep all of the originals and burn them out to DVD Disks, for future use. Even the bad ones. Every time I fill a 4G card, I burn it to disk. How else can you test the lastest super duper I can fix anything software without havingsome bad ones to test with ;-)

--Evan

[Fade2]

I have just about every picture (digital) i've ever shot, all backed up on cd or dvd
Bad and good.
Learning from both.

[Rob612]

You never know when a bad shot may come in handy. I keep everything.

[JCR]

Gods no...

I have been shooting anything and everything that don't move out of my way fast enough.
Hopefully one day I will be competent enough to attain 100% keeper rate but I have a feeling it's a long way off yet.

[tommykjensen]

I archive all the photos except the one that are clearly out of focus or unsalvageable.


Same here.

[Digital_Duck]

I suppose for those who may be schooled in this or have gain some degree of proficiency would be willing to retain a higher ratio of shots ...

... but me .... out of a couple hundred shots ... I dump more than I keep (that is why I am digital and not film)

[Jon, The Elder]

During the horse show season, I shoot for money. As this subject relies on very precise positioning, I will discard a certain number for technical reasons. However, I am sitting in front of 23 DVD's (this years output) that do qualify from that aspect.
I have over the years, needed to go back to the archives in cases where horses and sometimes people have passed on. Not a happy occurance, but one that has produced letters of gratitude for my efforts.

Workflow is basically....Camera/computer/external drive/DVD.

[Radtech1]

Nope, the obviously trashed and useless shots are forever deleted.

I keep everything only because it is too much trouble to go through and delete the "obviously trashed and useless shots".

Rad

[Miyagi-san]

i am quite new to SLR, but have been shooting with a P&S for a long time......so I have composition down well enough.

however, being new to SLR....I am having to relearn how to shoot, specifically choosing proper settings and proper holding technique. as a result: quite a few of my shots come out blurry (bad choice in shutter settings, bad form etc).

if i can tell it's blurry or whatnot on my tiny lcd, then obviously it's pretty bad. those get deleted on the spot.

i'm learning to check the histogram and trying to rely on it much more now, if i can tell my exposure is way off by reading that and there is definitely time permitting (landscape etc) then i will sometimes delete and change settings and try again. i try not to though, unless it's really badly exposed.

i definitely try to keep as much as i can. as they can definitely turn into really fun CS2 projects later on down the road. i usually only delete ones that i end up really hating the composition on, or are horrendously blurry.

even ones with a bad exposure can end up being incredible monotone, duotone, or B&W.

:D wax on, wax off

[thomascanty]

i'm learning to check the histogram and trying to rely on it much more now

I don't rely much on the histogram any more.

I was surprised to learn, while reading one of Bruce Fraser's (R.I.P. :() books, that the histogram you see on the camera's LCD shows what it would look like if the image had been processed to JPG using the current camera settings. I always shoot RAW, which means that histogram really isn't completely accurate for my images. I wait until I get back to a computer and load it into ACR before I decide if it's a keeper or not. As a result, I tend to shoot several shots of the same scene when I can, so I can pick out the best one later. Good thing storage is relatively cheap! :D

[Miyagi-san]

I don't rely much on the histogram any more.

I was surprised to learn, while reading one of Bruce Fraser's (R.I.P. :() books, that the histogram you see on the camera's LCD shows what it would look like if the image had been processed to JPG using the current camera settings. I always shoot RAW, which means that histogram really isn't completely accurate for my images. I wait until I get back to a computer and load it into ACR before I decide if it's a keeper or not. As a result, I tend to shoot several shots of the same scene when I can, so I can pick out the best one later. Good thing storage is relatively cheap! :D

....that's news to me. Interesting :) I'll have to try to save my deleting for the PC with the big screen