Do you keep your old RAW files

I just spent three hours culling my images from last weekend's Miramar Air show. I went from over 1100 pictures down to 215 and not all of those are going to go on my website.

Yes, I keep 'em all except OOF/blurry ones. The ones I like may not be the ones someone else might like.

TheHoff wrote in post #8763633
If you didn't like the shot right after the event, what are the chances you will like it in a year?

I cull all of the ones flagged "rejects" and for non-important events I also cull the ones flagged "unmarked" only keeping those flagged as keepers. For most days though I also keep the unmarked ones since disk space is cheap. I suppose it comes down to how important the event is for you... would you ever browse the non picks? For something like my son's birth, yes, we will browse the non-picks at some point... but for Aunt Martha's 68th birthday? Probably not.

doctorgonzo wrote in post #8763796
I delete the obvious rejects (OOF, drastic exposure problems, etc.). Everything else I keep.

Why keep a useless RAW file around? To prove I take plenty of crappy pictures? I have enough proof of that!

Exactly like me, if there is no chance of me liking a photo, due to it being unintentionally out of focus, then it is straight to the recycle bin for it

I have been known to like a photo that I have taken over five years, when it was completely overlooked by me then, but that is in rare case

neilwood32 wrote in post #8776864
I keep the vast majority of my shots for numerous reasons:
1) My PP skill gets better as time goes on - i may be able to rescue something in the future that i thought was useless.
2) I like to see how i have advanced as a photographer - and even the % of keepers/rubbish gives me an idea of how my eye is developing.
3) Space is cheap - it is a fairly cheap option these days to have a 500Gb hard drive as spare storage
4) You never know when you might want that one shot of Aunty xxxxx - even if it was a poor one in your opinion. It might still be the best one available.

Well said. I do the same for the reasons you mentioned.

The obvious rejects I reject right after importing, the rest I skim through selecting a handful worthy of post processing / publishing..

The rest I keep for a future date when I hopefully wont suck quite so much at Photoshop.

keep them all on a hard drive

Yea the ones I play with, I keep. Always nice to have them about just in casey. I figure I can ditch them in a while if I have the final copy nailed though. If I've worked on a snap for more than a afew hours i'll generally start to get bored and finalise it. Then the RAW may or may not get binned. They're damn huge, only keep the great shots. (ie not very many! )

I open them in Lightroom, and the ones that are OOF/blurry/under or overexposed beyond fixing I flag as "rejected". Then I go to those rejected photos "select all" and delete from disk. The remining photos I'll do "picks" (the best ones) and "unflagged" I still keep.

So I guess I would answer "yes".

Aside from the obvious misses, I tend to keep them.

But then again, I'm like my mother. I just can't throw anything away.