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Do you delete your raw/DNG? If not, why not?


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1 hour ago, 250swb said:

 

I suppose the bottom line might be if you consider your life as throw away then throw it away, but at least do it consistently and don't just pick on photography, but maybe you do throw everything away? The artist Michael Landy destroyed absolutely everything he owned, and I mean everything, as a piece of performance art. But at the end he had a piece of performance art. When you throw something away what statement does that make, what do you have left, what have you lost?

Hmmm, this thread is taking a rather philosophical turn! In that context, I tend to minimalism and I do not hoard for the sake of it. I retain that which is of value to me, but store it in a way that is not a burden on me or others, including by having a place for it that makes sense, is easily found if needed etc. Clothes, music, bicycles and, yes, photography. So I do not keep every DNG or negative, just as I do not keep every pair of shoes or LP I’ve ever bought,  but I do have some that are 30+ years old and still in use.

But I didn’t intend this to be a deep dive into how we live our lives - I was simply asking a practical question to see if others had hit on a workflow system that would suit me or could be tweaked slightly. 

Thanks all!

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  • 3 months later...

I never delete raw files. For me they are like exposed films, which You can develop several times, always with the newest developers.  You know that Adobe is improving their ACR from time to time and this is, at least for me, like a new film developer.

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  • 4 weeks later...

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My workflow

  1. Shooting in Dng
  2. Culling w/ Photomechanics. The outtakes, bye-bye forever. I just keep all Dng (and, of course, Jpegs) delivered.
  3. If assignment (or work), I create and keep a C1 catalog, plus the #ish DNG and JPEGS.
  4. Editing w/ Capture one and export using Jpeg Mini plugin.
  5. If personal, family, street photography, etc. (not work), I have the same workflow (I keep both files), but they are stored differently. I have three generic C1 catalogs: One exclusively for my Leica M10, one for Xiaomi smartphone photos, one for general use. 

As many of you said, it's useful and fantastic to keep your raw files. It's not the same using an already existed Jpeg for different purposes, or export a new Tif file, or whatever special conditions you want/need.

If you exported for example years ago some photos with a horrible sepia look (😬), but you still have the DNG's, you can bring back to life your pictures again, giving maybe a more appropriate look according to your needs. An exhibition, an essay. Possibilities are so many once you have the DNG. And it doesn't matter if you are an amateur or Pro. In the doubt, keep. Then decide if necessary.

I suggest you keep all the DNG you edit. Especially if your # of digital photos is around 2kish. For example, I have a folder where I keep my daily random photos with my M10 (not events or work). It's about 35GB with 1350 DNG files. It's not bad at all. And I can do whatever I want with my photos.

 

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58 minutes ago, Dennis said:

 

 

My workflow

  1. Shooting in Dng
  2. Culling w/ Photomechanics. The outtakes, bye-bye forever. I just keep all Dng (and, of course, Jpegs) delivered.
  3. If assignment (or work), I create and keep a C1 catalog, plus the #ish DNG and JPEGS.
  4. Editing w/ Capture one and export using Jpeg Mini plugin.
  5. If personal, family, street photography, etc. (not work), I have the same workflow (I keep both files), but they are stored differently. I have three generic C1 catalogs: One exclusively for my Leica M10, one for Xiaomi smartphone photos, one for general use. 

As many of you said, it's useful and fantastic to keep your raw files. It's not the same using an already existed Jpeg for different purposes, or export a new Tif file, or whatever special conditions you want/need.

If you exported for example years ago some photos with a horrible sepia look (😬), but you still have the DNG's, you can bring back to life your pictures again, giving maybe a more appropriate look according to your needs. An exhibition, an essay. Possibilities are so many once you have the DNG. And it doesn't matter if you are an amateur or Pro. In the doubt, keep. Then decide if necessary.

I suggest you keep all the DNG you edit. Especially if your # of digital photos is around 2kish. For example, I have a folder where I keep my daily random photos with my M10 (not events or work). It's about 35GB with 1350 DNG files. It's not bad at all. And I can do whatever I want with my photos.

 

 

Thanks for the insight to your workflow. I’m still settling into using Capture One, but currently it looks like:

1. Import my DNG files into my C1 catalog (I take so few photos and only for pleasure so no point complicating my life with sessions or multiple catalogs). I don’t shoot JPEG. I import the files into a “work in progress” folder while I’m culling/working on them.

2. Leave a few days. Go back and look afresh and delete the ones I don’t like or didn’t quite work (most of them!)

3. Edit the remaining files and allocate to folders in the catalog (I organise by theme - eg “Landscape”, “Travel”, “Family” etc rather than by date shot)

4. Export the few I think are good enough to merit potentially showing to others using a C1 preset to create a JPEG sharpened for screen viewing which goes into a folder on my MacBook Pro for which I’ve set an rule for it to be automatically added to Photos. The remaining edited DNG not converted to JPEG and imported into Photos remain in C1 (for now) - I may delete them later.

I’ve not decided what to do about printing - my printer (Canon 9500 Mk2) just died, partly because I haven’t been using it enough. Don’t know whether to replace it, rely on a printing service, or stick with just viewing on screen.

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1 hour ago, ianforber said:

Thanks for the insight to your workflow. I’m still settling into using Capture One, but currently it looks like:

1. Import my DNG files into my C1 catalog (I take so few photos and only for pleasure so no point complicating my life with sessions or multiple catalogs). I don’t shoot JPEG. I import the files into a “work in progress” folder while I’m culling/working on them.

2. Leave a few days. Go back and look afresh and delete the ones I don’t like or didn’t quite work (most of them!)

3. Edit the remaining files and allocate to folders in the catalog (I organise by theme - eg “Landscape”, “Travel”, “Family” etc rather than by date shot)

4. Export the few I think are good enough to merit potentially showing to others using a C1 preset to create a JPEG sharpened for screen viewing which goes into a folder on my MacBook Pro for which I’ve set an rule for it to be automatically added to Photos. The remaining edited DNG not converted to JPEG and imported into Photos remain in C1 (for now) - I may delete them later.

I’ve not decided what to do about printing - my printer (Canon 9500 Mk2) just died, partly because I haven’t been using it enough. Don’t know whether to replace it, rely on a printing service, or stick with just viewing on screen.

I suggest to use the same catalog if your photos are not so many. It's the easiest way. When I add new photos to the DNG folder, i just click on synchronize and voila. Anyway in your catalog you can create folders, album, smart albums etc. and organize your family, travel and whatever photos

 

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On 8/19/2020 at 7:59 PM, stephan54 said:

I used to keep the RAW files and delete the Jpeg's, now I keep the Jpeg's and delete  the RAW files.

Found I seldom edit an older picture. Took a lot of self pursuation to do so, but the other reason was the harddisk of my laptop filling up and having no space for new pictures.

External storage is rather cheap... I only keep recent raw files that I am working on currently on my computer's hard drive. After finishing I will delete them, but they will be stored on my two backup SSDs and on a number of older HDDs that reside in the safe. The last five years are stored in iCloud as well to share amongst my computers.

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Since I work in Lightroom and simply work on and print from DNGs (occasionally tiffs or psds if I've round-tripped to Photoshop etc), or export from LR for social media, it is never a question of "do I delete raws?", but simply "do I delete images?", to which the answer is yes, a lot.
1. After importing, when I delete all the dross (OOF, finger on the lens, total wrong exposure etc), and all except a couple of the multiple shots I took to get the right angle/timing/perspective/composition.
2. After working through them in LR and deciding that some shots were just misconceived and would never make a decent shot and add nothing to my memories, emotions etc.
3. After deciding that a shot is not worthy of my own perception of where I want to be as a photographer. "I ought to be able to do much better than this" and "lesser shots must be deleted pour encourager les autres".

(3) is the most difficult to judge, and only I can make that choice. It needs a self-critical eye, to decide exactly what doesn't work in an image, and what I should have done differently.

Self-criticism is the hardest skill for a photographer to learn. Every time I see someone post a shot on FB or instagram and ask others for C&C, I see someone who is unable to develop their own self-critical skills and photographer's eye.

So, going back to the OP in August, I suggest (in a traditional internet response) this is the wrong question! Why do you think your shots are so crap that you have no wish to keep them? (I'm offering no judgement - AFAIK your work may be great). Perhaps if you looked harder at them and passed the lessons learned into a feedback loop the next time you pressed the shutter, you might find you want to keep more of them.

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To compare it with analog photography, for me the DNG is the exposed film (with an endless lifetime), the RAW converter is the developer. And this raw converter is improved on a regular basis, means when You get a new, maybe better, developer You can "develop" the exposed film again and again.

Thats why I would never delete the raw file. 

Edited by strohscw
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I keep few, just those that I feel may warrant a revisit one day. I will ‘develop’ my raw files and put them to one side for a few days until I’m comfortable that I have the result I want. Life is short, I like taking photos, never been one to prefer spending my days under a safe light - most of my raw files are deleted and good riddance. Nobody else will want my raw files either, my kids have their own lives to enjoy.

 

I also used to cull my 35mm slides - in the trash. Negatives I keep because they come in strips all joined up.

Edited by Mr.Prime
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12 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Since I work in Lightroom and simply work on and print from DNGs (occasionally tiffs or psds if I've round-tripped to Photoshop etc), or export from LR for social media, it is never a question of "do I delete raws?", but simply "do I delete images?", to which the answer is yes, a lot.
1. After importing, when I delete all the dross (OOF, finger on the lens, total wrong exposure etc), and all except a couple of the multiple shots I took to get the right angle/timing/perspective/composition.
2. After working through them in LR and deciding that some shots were just misconceived and would never make a decent shot and add nothing to my memories, emotions etc.
3. After deciding that a shot is not worthy of my own perception of where I want to be as a photographer. "I ought to be able to do much better than this" and "lesser shots must be deleted pour encourager les autres".

(3) is the most difficult to judge, and only I can make that choice. It needs a self-critical eye, to decide exactly what doesn't work in an image, and what I should have done differently.

Self-criticism is the hardest skill for a photographer to learn. Every time I see someone post a shot on FB or instagram and ask others for C&C, I see someone who is unable to develop their own self-critical skills and photographer's eye.

So, going back to the OP in August, I suggest (in a traditional internet response) this is the wrong question! Why do you think your shots are so crap that you have no wish to keep them? (I'm offering no judgement - AFAIK your work may be great). Perhaps if you looked harder at them and passed the lessons learned into a feedback loop the next time you pressed the shutter, you might find you want to keep more of them.

Perceptive reframing of my original question! I do try to learn lessons on why I’m not happy with my pictures. In part I think it’s because I don’t shoot enough, so I don’t have the ‘eye’ for good composition - or at least it takes me a while to recover it. At least with my Q2 I don’t have to bother relearning how the camera works - just like my film cameras with aperture dial, shutter speed dial etc. But I’m with @Mr.Prime here. I used to brutally discard my transparencies (and negs too). If I’m not going to print it or look at again, it gets deleted unless it has some emotion relevance (family etc).

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Without being presumptuous, like you I was in a bit of a photographic rut in 2011 when I borrowed a M9 for the weekend, and discovered a camera that was capable of taking far better photos than I was, shockingly so. Ever since then I have felt challenged, and stimulated, to outgrow my camera - which I've failed to do. Maybe you need to find something that stimulates you in the same way*.

 

*Edit. It's not necessarily to do with Leica. I felt the same stimulation a few decades before when I found myself in SE Asia where film and processing were the price of a cup of coffee, and processing took an hour or so. I could shoot a couple of rolls of film in the morning, and see the results after lunch when I could remember exactly how I tried to take them - then go out and correct my mistakes.

Edited by LocalHero1953
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3 minutes ago, LocalHero1953 said:

Without being presumptuous, like you I was in a bit of a photographic rut in 2011 when I borrowed a M9 for the weekend, and discovered a camera that was capable of taking far better photos than I was, shockingly so. Ever since then I have felt challenged, and stimulated, to outgrow my camera - which I've failed to do. Maybe you need to find something that stimulates you in the same way.

Not presumptuous at all. In fact, it’s exactly why I got the Q2. A far better camera than I am a photographer, and one I really enjoy using. Much like my Mamiya 7 which I regret selling a few years ago - I always enjoyed pressing the shutter button and seeing the Velvia transparencies or Reala/Delta 100 prints was always a joy

Basically, I need to stop being lazy and get out and take some pictures!

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