Keeping your photographs

[The Black Rabbit]

I am ILL.
I have J-peg-itis I think....
It would be somewhat easier to understand if I was displaying the symptoms of Raw-itis, or even Tiff-itis, but J-peg-itis it most surely is...

Let me explain.
I've owned a couple of normal film SLRs in years gone by - taking the odd 36 exposure film here and there (maybe once a month and 3 or so on holiday).
I have now been in possession of a digital bridge camera (FZ20) for abiut 4 months, and I am slowing down my lap top with the number of images I'm taking and more importantly... KEEPING.

I'm up to 1Gb for February alone (and we're not even mid-way though the month - a month with relatively few wee beasties to snap 'n' all!), and remember I'm talking j-pegs here, and re-sized at that, not memory-sapping other forms of files!

I need some medicine for this condition. I'd rather not burn all my images onto a monthly CD- 12 CDs in a year? 60 in 5 years?!!

What does everyone else do?
Do you get tough, and limit your "keepers" on file?
Do you pick the BEST shot you took of that Woodpecker/Aphid/Red Deer (delete as appropriate) and bin the rest?

I need to learn how to get tough with my images and fast....
BEFORE the summer and her insects arrive in numbers!

Any help/advice greatly appreciated please.
What do YOU do?


Cheers
Doug

[RichBrew]

External hard drives would appear to be the answer if you don't want to go the DVD/CD route, although with digital imaging you can't have too much in the way of back-up. I also do several edits with new images, getting more ruthless with each viewing, until I am left with only the material I intend to work on and keep.

RichBrew

[John]

I take far more images than you in a month, in fact sometimes in a day.

First of all my PC has a 140 GB hard drive and I have split it, using 100GB for my programmes etc and 40gb for my data, including all my photos.

From time to time there are photos that I want to keep the original full size image in case I want to print it out, or maybe be in a better position to create a better image (more knowledge of how to use Photoshop). These are kept in a holding file. If I were to save these on my PC my hard drive would be full in no time so I have purchased an 80GB external drive and as well as using it as a back up for all my data all my holding files are kept on it.

John

[Fourwings]

You learn to be fairly ruthless Doug
I can appreciate where you are coming from, when I look back through the discs from my early days with digital cameras I wonder why did I keep all those images, as your digital photography skills develop you will find that you become far more self-critical of your work and will therefore keep only what you consider to be your best work.
To give you an example, I took well over 500 images on Monday in Norfolk and I have kept 35, of these I think about 12 will actually make it to my backup discs!
I only keep on backup what I consider to be my very best images now.
I still burn them onto DVD's, they hold far more than CD's. I know you still have the problem of storage but I have heard so many horror stories about external drives failing and corrupting all the data on them.
I have two discs in use, on one I keep the original files as they were when taken, on the second one I have the completed edits that are ready for use/viewing.

[GerryNick2]

I have two 250gb hard drives on my PC set up in a Mirror Raid so if one drive fails I can replace it and the other drive will automatically copy the contents to the replacement drive.

In addition I have two 250gb external Lacie drives, one is a backup of raw images and the other contains exported images to tiff.

Space on the hard drive is not a problem at the moment, when it is I will just add a further external drive or uprate the PC hard drives to 500gb.

Stopped using DVD,s for back up as they just cluttered up my office and take time to burn, so now just use external drives to meet my needs as required, they are quite a cheap option now.

Gerry

[jennyb]

I know how you feel Doug. I wish I had a better system too. I have tens of thousands of images most of them mediocre but I find it very difficult to hit the delete button. I really must become more ruthless.

I have a 1 terabyte external drive set up in a mirror raid so I theoretically have 3 copies of everything, 1 on my PC and 2 on the external drive(s). My very best images are also duplicated to a separate folder so theoretically I have 6 copies of those.

Now that I have started taking video too, I am going to be in big trouble if I continue hoarding

Jenny

[Bub-les]

Originally Posted by The Black Rabbit

I am ILL.
What does everyone else do?
Do you get tough, and limit your "keepers" on file?
Do you pick the BEST shot you took of that Woodpecker/Aphid/Red Deer (delete as appropriate) and bin the rest?

I need to learn how to get tough with my images and fast....
BEFORE the summer and her insects arrive in numbers!

Any help/advice greatly appreciated please.
What do YOU do?


Cheers
Doug

Hi Doug, I fully empathise with you and suffer from a similar problem. Mine was enhanced shortly after going digital when I went on holiday. I was encouraged to take all my photos in jpeg but at a small resolution! Now although I can access them I cannot do much with them as they are toooooo small! This has resulted in me taking everything at the highest resolution possible at all times! I too find it very hard to be ruthless and get rid of rubbish! There are just too many ... maybe I can do a better job later...photos but I never seem to get the time! So any advise given in this thread will be gratefully appreciated by me as well.
Barbara

[glsammy]

This is a never ending problem for me. I keep far too many, I'm going to have to become more ruthless in future. I have two internal hard drives, exclusively for photos. One is simply a copy of the other. I also back up to DVD every month.
I also keep a file reference system called pixfiler, which helps me find them again. When I look back I often wonder why I bothered to keep so many. Many many duplicate shots I could easily live without, but for some weird reason, I can't bring myself to get rid of them.
At the moment I'm shooting RAW, which makes matters even worse. Do I keep the large RAW file, or the Huge TIFF file, as well as the converted JPEG?? At the moment I'm keeping all of them, but that's got to stop.
Time for a long hard re-think.

[pressld2]

I have a 250Gb internal drive that I use for Windows, program files and 'normal' data - word docs, spreadsheets, Outlook folders etc. Then I have a 400Gb internal drive for photos and video editing. Finally I have a 500Gb external drive used for backing up the important stuff from both internal drives. I also back up photos to DVD everytime I have enough to fill one.

I shoot RAW and having just upgraded to a D300 I'm looking at an average of 12Mb per file. So every 83 shots there's another Gigabyte gone! I am getting more and more ruthless about what I keep and what gets deleted but I think I'm going to have to be even tougher in future.

Dave P.

[Tormentil]

Be ruthless. Easy to say, hard to do,though. Like Graham, I find it difficult to ditch pics.

Back up and back up again.

I used to have two internal drives (1 @ 80Gb and 1 @ 120Gb). All my pics were stored on the larger of the two, the other was for my OS and programme files. Needless to say the large drive failed and I lost everything. I was a bit miffed at the time, but its not the end of the world. They are only images and can be replaced.

My 80Gb drive is now split into two, 30Gb for OS & Programme files, the rest for data/photos. I also back up my data/pics to a 500Gb external drive (always, always, let yer external drive spin down before unplugging it).

I also copy all my pics to DVD's at least once a month. And always keep yer DVD/CD's out of sunlight as it will, fairly quickly, degrade the dye on them, rendering them useless.