Coversion/Storage Questions

I have taken 600+ raw photos in three weekends and I need to start planning ahead. I have a few questions for the digital old timers.

1) Do you keep every photo you shoot? I have deleted shots that were bad (out of focus/wrong exposure) in the camera and re-shot but what about the rest - the ones that looked OK on the LCD screen but aren't that great full size?

2) Do you store your files off of your PC? Where (CD-R, Jaz, etc)? Do you keep multiple sets?

3) Do you convert raw files to tiff for manipulation or convert directly to jpg with little compression?

4) Do you convert all of your raw files to tiff automatically or only the ones you really like? If you do convert them all, do you then delete the tiffs you don't really like?

5) Do you keep all of your original raw files like film negatives? Are these stored away from the ones that were manipulated?

Sorry for all of the questions but I really need some good ideas. Thanks.

John,

1) I keep the ones I like.
2) I keep them on a zip disk after processing, eventually move them to CDR.
3,4) I usually acquire directly into PaintShopPro7, no intermediate tiff. Last batch, I used the BreezeSys downloader to get the exif data; that creates tiff for you, but I don't keep them.
5) I keep the CRW if shot in that mode, original JPG if in that mode. I use Thumber to change the file name to date-time for the original JPG (do it manually for CRW) and add a code letter for processed image (c for crop, e for special effect, etc). I keep them all together filed in monthly folders. Use Thumber to create a web-browsable archive. Since this only sees JPG, I make a JPG copy of a CRW that had no post-processing. I use minimal compression, have not had problems with artifacts. I create an Excel spreadsheet for each month. If shot as JPG, Thumber can create this. For CRW, I add rows manually with camera data from the Breeze-created exif text files.

Del,

You might try Exif Viewer, it uses the RAW .thm file to display all exif info and a small thumbnail in spreadsheet format. You would not have to enter your RAW files manually. Then again, you would not have the spreadsheet files, except when you open Exif Viewer and browse the image folder in real-time, no spread sheet to "carry around."

Anyway, may be worth a try for you.

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