I find that after I go shoot and begin to look through the images I have alot of trouble deleting ANY of the images weither they be bad or horribly bad just because I think I MAY use them for something later on. Do any of you have this problem. If not what is the percentage of shots you usually end up keeping?
Yeah, I'm the same... I have a hard time deleting things, even if they suck. I always shoot RAW, so the bad ones don't get processed, but I still hang on to the RAWs for some reason. My keeper percentage depends a lot on what I'm shooting.
There is a saying... The difference between a good photographer and bad photographer, is the size of the waste basket (recycle bin). A good photographer may only show their very best work, and so that's how other people will see & judge them. A 'less good' photographer might show all of their work, and be judged on their poorer works. My process is to quickly go through the images from a shoot and pick out the obvious duds & mis-fires etc. These get deleted. Then I go through a few more times, picking out the best shots (and some of the 'maybe' shots) and separating them somehow. Tagging them or giving them a rating etc. I work in Lightroom, so I create a new 'collection' with these 'keepers'...and that is what I use for the rest of the process. I haven't deleted the shots that are 'OK but not keepers'...I just don't take them further into the process. After a while (maybe a month, maybe a year), when I'm doing some archive upkeep, I might go though and actually delete some or all of the 'non-keepers'. If I haven't looked at or used them by that time, they don't need to be kept.
I have a very similar process to Big Mike. I go through all the photos and delete anything that I know I'd never want, mis-focus, mis-fire, person blinking, flash didn't fire, water drops on my lens, etc... Then I go back through the ones that are left, marking the ones that I want with a 5 star rating (I use View NX for this step since the stars "transfer" to NX2). Once I've marked all those, I try to step away for a bit to give me eyes time to forget the shots. Then I set it to show only the 5 star photos and go through those and look for duplicates of very similar shots, and choose one or two of the best of those...the others I take away from the 5 star and they dissapear...once done I have my keepers, but I do keep what's left of the other raws and not process them. When I open up Capture NX2, it's easy for me to go to that folder and select for it to only show my 5 star rated photos...makes it easier for batching, or just gerenally getting to the keepers. I see no reason to keep shots where someone is blinking or I mis-focused.
What I do is similar to what you guys do, I just never seem to actually delete them. After import (in LR), I go through and mark all the rejects (X). Then I go through whats left and mark the picks (P). Then I filter it to only show the picks, then go through that and unmark (U) the 'lesser' ones. So, then I'm left with the best of the 'picks'. These are the ones that get processed. I might assign some of them ratings, but they all get processed regardless of rating. I need to go through and actually delete all of the rejects... They are, after all, rejects - I'm never going to do anything with them...
After I found out how long it takes LR to chew through the 7D's files converting them to DNG's, I decided to be a lot more picky about what I let into the editing process.
I am very similar to this in how I deal with things. Even teh horrible disasters of a shot are still on my computer as a RAW file. I've even backed them all up to two external harddives - though that was mostly because it was simpler to do (copy paste - no hunting around needed). However as my harddrive is nearly totally full I am having to cull through the RAWs. The only problem is I don't want to do it - it means I have to edit the shots which are keepers which I havnt yet touched and I want to do that on semi decent computer screen (nothing expensive but my current screen is horrible for contrast changes as my view angle changes even the slightest). And I don't fancy having to re-edit a lot of my work again (I will if needed but its a lot..) Add to that the fact that I never delete in the field when shooting - ever (unless I am really pushed for more memory card space). The reason is simply that delete and delete all are right next to each other on the camera menu and I don't want (on a cold day with gloves and my fingers shaking) want to suddenly have to head back and reach for restoration software to get images back off the card (plusis means the card can't be used again in the field till the images are off otherwise they will all be corrupted and lost). Memory cards are dirt cheap so its not out of the question to just carry another card in the pocket - currently I have 2 4GB and 2 2GB cards - and I have only ever filled them all twice (once on holiday with no computer and several days of shooting and the other time at the British Wildlife Centre)
I'm the same way. I'll let them sit in my trash for a while (probably terrible for my computer), then look at them about a week later. If it's really that bad after time, then I ditch it.
Earlier on I had the same problem. I always thought maybe I could do something cool to this sub par shot to make it great. It pained me to delete something I could maybe use. But once I got into the habit of really really wanting only thhe strongest shots it took my photography to a new level. I now get excited to delete! It makes room for only the best stuff and makes it soooooo much easier when processing and picking images. I delete in camera, then examine and delete upon import. Then after about a week I go back through again and delete even more. I find if you step away from a certain group of images for a little bit, when you return you see shots you thought were strong and realize maybe they need to go. There is so much power in deleting! It really does take your photography to a new level. If it doesn't blow you away I say throw it out!!!
i do something similar to bigmike. ill go through once and flag everything that is decent and better. then i'll assign those a rating of 3, 4, or 5. ill develop the 5s first and then the 4s. after that i will see where i stand with a set of just 4s and 5s and maybe cherry pick some 3s to add in if need be or if i decide some were better than first glance. after some time (month or three) ill go back, assign all the ones i did end up keeping a level of 5, then sort for all with a rating below 5 and delete them. that way only the keepers get kept.
