Gibbo Posted July 19, 2012 Share #1 Â Posted July 19, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) ... do you still save all your RAW files or simply delete them Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advertisement Posted July 19, 2012 Posted July 19, 2012 Hi Gibbo, Take a look here Once you have processed them .... I'm sure you'll find what you were looking for!
jaapv Posted July 19, 2012 Share #2 Â Posted July 19, 2012 :eek:DELETE them? That is the same as throwing your negatives in the dustbin! Those are your images you are killing. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil U Posted July 19, 2012 Share #3 Â Posted July 19, 2012 I pickle them. Â In all seriousness, I keep the DNG that is imported to LR and converted to the LR DNG format during the import. I don't also keep the camera generated DNG (or Canon RAW when i was using a 5d) though I know some do that. Â Here is a possibly controversial view of mine.... whilst I would choose to keep my photographs, if I lost them all then I honestly would not be all that bothered - I'll just go out and take some more. And, yes, I appreciate many are unrepeatable shots for various reasons. The only shots I would really mourn would be family photos. The "photography photographs" (i.e my attempts at "art", street, landscapes or whatever - even travel), well, never mind, so be it, if they go, they go. Put it this way, the hard disk of DNG's is very far down the priority list of things I would save from the proverbial burning building and whilst I back up my hard disk against technical failure I don't back up my hard disks to an off site location. Maybe this says something about my photography and perhaps even more about my lackadaisical attitude! Â caveat: I don't earn my living from photography and if I did my attitude would be different, naturally. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 19, 2012 Share #4 Â Posted July 19, 2012 Well, I go to considerable trouble to safeguard them. If I process an image,, say for web output or a medium print, it is useless for a large print, so it would be pretty bothersome if I would decide or be asked to do so. Furthermore processing software gets better by the year. I just reprocesssed some M8 files from 2006-2007 and the quality jump, especially higher ISO ones was nothing short of considerable. The camera raw file is the negative and in the end, the only thing worth preserving. Apart from the prints, of course, but those will fade. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scarlet Posted July 19, 2012 Share #5 Â Posted July 19, 2012 And storage is cheap. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
proenca Posted July 20, 2012 Share #6  Posted July 20, 2012 ... do you still save all your RAW files or simply delete them  good Lord my good man, you gave me a heart stop failure now.  I keep them forever and ever. RAID solutions on a server and also cloud services.  I like to backup but not that fanatic.  First - storage is cheap.  Second, sometimes I use the image for web only ( write for a few websites ) . But sometimes I want to come back to the image for other purposed, so if out a picture that I processed in 800x600 for a blog, I want to process bigger for a print for example, I was dead toast if I threw away the DNG.  Third, last but not least at all - RAW conversions improve over time. It really shows. Just see Lightroom processing the same DNG file ( same camera, same file ) years ago and now - you can recover much more data, handle the noise much much better and remove moire like a god.  M8 and M9 files took this to great advantage : they won a full stop of better ISO, just because Lightroom heavily improved their noise reduction profiles for Leica.  Never ever ever throw away your DNG files - thats my tip. Sure, delete the ones you dont want, misfocused and badly composed.  The others I keep. For ever and ever  ps : I even went "back in time" and reprocessed in Lightroom 4 some old M8 files and they came out MUCH nicer in terms of contrast and noise. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
250swb Posted July 20, 2012 Share #7  Posted July 20, 2012 Advertisement (gone after registration) ... do you still save all your RAW files or simply delete them   You don't need to process all of them, only the ones you like the look of at the moment. But you should keep all of them.  Steve Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
george + Posted July 20, 2012 Share #8 Â Posted July 20, 2012 As said above, it is the original DNG-s that are worth saving. Â I tend to process the best looking ones right away, then go back, sometimes months, later and play with the rest. And get some of my favourites that way. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanyasi Posted July 20, 2012 Share #9 Â Posted July 20, 2012 I keep my RAW files. For a given outing I do edit them down over time through deletion. Some ideas simply didn't work or I got the one great shot out of ten tries and I then delete ones that just are not going to be in the running. Â On a related point, when I am using my Canon DSLRs, I convert the Canon proprietary raw files into a DNGs. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted July 21, 2012 Share #10 Â Posted July 21, 2012 On a related point, when I am using my Canon DSLRs, I convert the Canon proprietary raw files into a DNGs.Yes, but that will preserve the raw information, just (hopefully) make it more accessible in the future.Btw, it is not RAW, but simply raw, not being an acronym. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sblitz Posted July 26, 2012 Share #11 Â Posted July 26, 2012 there is only so much room on the lap top, so I save all to an external drive. i also save the original sd cards in a small pelican case and buy new ones rather than use the same over and over (added this method about a year ago) ... as jaap and others have said -- these are your negatives and storage is cheap. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-hawinkler Posted July 26, 2012 Share #12 Â Posted July 26, 2012 there is only so much room on the lap top, so I save all to an external drive. i also save the original sd cards in a small pelican case and buy new ones rather than use the same over and over (added this method about a year ago) ... as jaap and others have said -- these are your negatives and storage is cheap. Â Â WOW! Â How many cards do you have by now? How do you keep track of which image is on which card? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
sblitz Posted July 26, 2012 Share #13 Â Posted July 26, 2012 I don't and that's the fun (to me) .... random discovery, a process sorely lacking in this digital age. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
adan Posted July 26, 2012 Share #14 Â Posted July 26, 2012 I treat my .DNGs just like slides - I toss some if they are missed moments, really poor exposures, or otherwise flawed (or junk like lens tests). Keep the rest. If I open a picture and do a lot of post-work on it, I'll save a Photoshop version (.psd file) with the adjustments. Â My pix are filed by month, with two subfolders: "Originals xx_xx" and "Reworks." Occasionally a "film scans" folder as well - but not much of that these days. Within "originals" the pix are sorted into subfolders by assignment/subject/event/etc. Â At the moment I have virtually every picture ever shot digitally or scanned (provided they passed the edit process above) still on my internal hard drive (~500 Gb) - but also have 2 backups of everything on external HD. Â Will need to upgrade my internal drive soon for more space, though - only 40 Gb left. Â It is true that SD cards are becoming so cheap that keeping them around is as cheap as keeping processed negs or slides - but the idea makes my head hurt. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
k-hawinkler Posted July 26, 2012 Share #15 Â Posted July 26, 2012 I don't and that's the fun (to me) .... random discovery, a process sorely lacking in this digital age. Â Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
algrove Posted August 4, 2012 Share #16 Â Posted August 4, 2012 I subscribe to the idea of always keeping my unprocessed DNG files as there are improvements in PP software coming. Â Look at the difference some LR3 processed DNGs look now with LR4 as one small example. The RAW processor improvements keep coming and reprocessing the ones you especially like can be worth the reprocessing from time to time. Â Agree with most posts above-keep them storage is cheap, even SSD storage. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
lanetomlane Posted August 9, 2012 Share #17  Posted August 9, 2012 I always burn the SD card DNG images to DVD before I do anything. I then do a quick scan of the images and delete the obvious junk ...... out of focus, accidental shots of my shoes, etc, etc. I then save in a Lightroom library to an external drive and back that up. __________________ Regards, Tom     Photography by Tom Lane Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jean-Michel Posted August 9, 2012 Share #18 Â Posted August 9, 2012 People, people! The media you are storing your data will fail. You will lose all your images. Therefore, at the very least, back-up your data onto another drive, and preferably to a third device that is kept in a different location. Jean-Michel Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
algrove Posted August 12, 2012 Share #19  Posted August 12, 2012 People, people!The media you are storing your data will fail. You will lose all your images. Therefore, at the very least, back-up your data onto another drive, and preferably to a third device that is kept in a different location. Jean-Michel  Oh, yes. My offsite location is a coffre besides the 3 other copies. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaapv Posted August 13, 2012 Share #20 Â Posted August 13, 2012 People, people!The media you are storing your data will fail. You will lose all your images. Therefore, at the very least, back-up your data onto another drive, and preferably to a third device that is kept in a different location. Jean-Michel Why should it fail?: Â Â Blank DVD-R Archival Grade Gold Discs for Archiving Digital Storage - Archival DVD Media | Verbatim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.