rethinking my "keep every image" policy

ThomasOwenM wrote in post #12399330
Well, the 1200 recent count was on at a show where I shot 5 different bands and the lighting was among the worst I've ever had.

Ah, well... it just sounded like 1200 was par for the course. Still, be ruthless when going through the results

I shoot RAW, but won't keep any of it, i'd rather convert it all into High quality JPEG.

Jaynez wrote in post #12399917
I shoot RAW, but won't keep any of it, i'd rather convert it all into High quality JPEG.

Hmm, if you are desparate for disk space, you do what you need to do, but unless you have personal/professional/​commercial reasons for doing this it doesn't make a lot of sense to just discard the advantage of the Raw file once you have done one conversion for a lot of what people shoot so I would never give that out as general advice without a healthy dose of explanation...

tonylong wrote in post #12400980
Hmm, if you are desparate for disk space, you do what you need to do, but unless you have personal/professional/​commercial reasons for doing this it doesn't make a lot of sense to just discard the advantage of the Raw file once you have done one conversion for a lot of what people shoot so I would never give that out as general advice without a healthy dose of explanation...

Agree with that for my better shots, but there's plenty of others (e.g. a documentary but not exceptional shot of one of my kids sports activities) where a jpg is good and there is no realistic chance of a later edit or redo. I think I'll save maybe 10-20% of my RAW's from 7D and the rest save only the converted jpg. With 30D I saved them all as the files were so much smaller.

lungdoc wrote in post #12401381
Agree with that for my better shots, but there's plenty of others (e.g. a documentary but not exceptional shot of one of my kids sports activities) where a jpg is good and there is no realistic chance of a later edit or redo. I think I'll save maybe 10-20% of my RAW's from 7D and the rest save only the converted jpg. With 30D I saved them all as the files were so much smaller.

That's what I'm thinking probably makes sense. It's also more of an issue of going to an online backup service like Carbonite than of hard drive space since external drives are pretty affordable. Online backup can do what external drives cannot: keep your data even if everything in your house is destroyed. It would take quite a long time to backup terabytes worth of data online, and this could keep ballooning up and up if I use inefficient storage methods. I'm thinking maybe once all the post processing is complete of just keeping the RAWs that I actually ended up needing since I've got everything in jpeg anyway, and then of more aggressively deleting the outtakes in jpegs.

ThomasOwenM wrote in post #12398279
I'm curious if others have mulled this issue over and and how you've dealt with mass storage issues.

I delete all the crap.
(I use iView to catalog everything I've shot, so I can see my "hit vs. miss" ratio there if I want to.)
I backup everything to an external HDD, then after editing only leave the "keepers" on there and do a backup to a second HDD in a dock. (cheaper drives, and it's used as off-site backup when full, so I don't need to access it anyway unless I have a HDD crash)
I figure that if my house burns down, I have something else to worry about.
I use Lightroom for performing arts, since I can do all I need to there, and after editing convert the CR2 to DNG: Way smaller then saving a .psd work file for each image.

René Damkot wrote in post #12401742
I delete all the crap.
(I use iView to catalog everything I've shot, so I can see my "hit vs. miss" ratio there if I want to.)
I backup everything to an external HDD, then after editing only leave the "keepers" on there and do a backup to a second HDD in a dock. (cheaper drives, and it's used as off-site backup when full, so I don't need to access it anyway unless I have a HDD crash)
I figure that if my house burns down, I have something else to worry about.
I use Lightroom for performing arts, since I can do all I need to there, and after editing convert the CR2 to DNG: Way smaller then saving a .psd work file for each image.

Interesting approach. I've never used iView. I have Lightroom 2.3, but never use it. Maybe I'll finally study up on it. I use Canon's Zoombrowser Ex and then Photoshop with the plugins NoiseNinja, Silver Efex Pro, and sometimes Portraiture extensively. I also use a less-known program named PhotoImpact. I used to use Paint Shop Pro, but began using it less and less as my Photoshop skill increased.

I've heard the big plus to Lightroom is you can group images and then make mass changes to them all, thus speeding up workflow. Is that LR's biggest plus?

I use a docking HD system for backup and 1-drive resides in my bank deposit box for ultimate safety. I backup the home docked drive twice a week and rotate that drive to the bank once per month. If I was really active, I would rotate more often. If the house burns down and computer destroyed, I still have a cloned HD ready to go.

ThomasOwenM wrote in post #12404912
Is that LR's biggest plus?

Nah. You can do that in ACR/Bridge as well.

Biggest plus (IMO) are:

• Ability to search for offline images (big one!)
  
• Ability to search for missing images
  
• One application for sorting / editing / building web gallery / upload to flickr or whatever (including a print service I occasionally use) (and, if you feel so inclined, print and slideshow)
  
• A bit faster to work with presets then ACR (one dropdown menu to go through less)
  
• Cheaper to upgrade then PS: LR3 is way better then LR2
  

• No softproofing (So I print from PSCS4)
  
• Histogram does not reflect output color space
  
• Dual screen support could be better
  

I keep every shot - sequenced 1-9999 in RAW. Have done so with most all my cameras and shots. Just never know when something obscure might be important. Disk space is cheap. Just added another external 2x3tb for $220 which will keep me going a long while yet.

In addition to sequenced raws - this year I have kept every shoot in date order with RAWs and then attach a file with reworked JPGs. These date order shoots I keep multiple back ups + online.

While not the most economical use of space I see storage as only getting more affordable and pics from the past only being more valuable. Save them while you have got them - you cannot recapture them.

As far as deleting bad shots etc - just not worth the time/effort for one shot here and one there. Just save them all.

ThomasOwenM wrote in post #12398509
Also, another reason to shoot RAW+Jpeg is to prevent losing any image due to a card failure. I shoot with a 1D Mark III and have it put the RAW file on the CF card and the jpeg on the SD card. Either card could fail and I would still have all my shots.

I am curious, how often have you lost images due to card failure.
It sounds to me from reading this thread, you are very cautious indeed. I think you are wasting your resources and not trying to improve on your talent.

Me, I would stop the raw+jpeg shooting. You are also wasting time. Shoot in raw and process in lightroom or a similar program.

1. How do you catalog your photos, meta data, etc...?
2. What program are you currently using?
2a - without knowing the answer to 2, I am guessing you may not have a great way of finding your photos later. Meta data offers a multitude of ways to identify and later find your images.

I also believe that when one starts accumulating more than 10,000 images, saving duds is not worth it. Saving for the future is nonsense, as who is going to have the time later to sort through 10s of thousands of photos to make corrections with 'future' software?

"Take good photos now, sharpen one's skills now and don't worry about fixing the future"

I like shooting RAW+Jpeg, one on each card and intend to keep doing so. With people paying me money to photograph them, I'm not taking any chances on losing their photos. It's a good system, and one of the reasons why I chose a 1D 3. I had previously (back when shooting with a 20D) considered investing into one of the portable backup systems you can use in the field, but this is much better because everything's automatically backed up as I shoot. I could shoot RAW to each card or Jpeg to each card and thus auto-backup, but I think RAW+Jpeg makes more sense for giving me choice in post processing. No, I've never had a card failure, but it happens. I decided to do it this way after reading threads by wedding photographers who were in the unenviable position of having to tell their clients that they had no shots of the ceremony due to a CF card failure. I've decided that's never going to happen to me. I'm protecting the images I've gone through a lot of trouble to take. Some shoots such as CD release shows or awards shows are like weddings because there can be no reshoots.

I'm not sure where you got that I'm not attempting to improve my technique. I'm always learning with every shoot and seeking to improve both with in-field and post processing technique. This thread is only about what to save and what to toss.

I'm not using metadata. I just save in folders by date and description such as "2011_05_3 Band Name". I'm using Zoombrowser Ex, Photoshop w/ some plugins, PhotoImpact, and occasionally some software I wrote myself. I used to use PhotoMechanic and intended to use its cataloging features, but it never really grew on me. I also used to use Paint Shop Pro, but eventually uninstalled it due to non use.

Try to keep everything but the total junk.

My prefered method is :
Off load the pictures from the card and import into Lightroom.
Backup all to another hard drive.
Work through the images in Lightroom and marking the very good ones 5 star, deleting obvious junk.
Export the 5 stars to my laptop, giving me 3 copies of the good ones.
Then I convert everything to DNG and re-backup.

I can lose a drive or my laptop and I'm still good. I also keep my lightroom catalogue in my dropbox account. I would like a better solution but since I'm travelling all the time I have to do the best I can. Hard drives are cheap, even here in South America. Which is good, I took 35,000 photos in 2 weeks in the Galapagos!

I would be annoyed if I lost the majority of my pictures, but suicidal if I lost the really good ones...

Why even bother to keep bad photos? I'm a delete happy person....

I do delete the images that never get used you could end up having terabytes of images.

Why do we keep all our crap/good images? Is it a hoarding thing about photography?

I can though happily delete and entire days worth of shooting planes,animals etc, but when it comes to family images then I feel bad deleting them as thy are family

I only keep the best image so if I have 50 shots of one plane then only the best one will remain

I think as was told to me by a photographer 30 years experiance is that as I get better and better my 50shots of one subject will be reduced to 3-5

Anyone else feel the same