“Beauty in Motion”
© Copyright David Hammond
Warning! Deleting photos from your camera can be hazardous to your health!
Okay, I’m exaggerating just a bit, but how would you feel if you accidentally deleted a photo you intended to keep? Or your camera ran out of battery power before the end of your shooting excursion? These are just a couple of reasons why it’s a bad idea to delete photos from your camera. Instead, delete the ones you don’t like after you copy all of the photos to your computer. Or better yet, don’t delete any photos — ever! Just back them up, multiple times, in multiple locations.
Here’s the rationale:
1. Memory cards and storage are cheap. Back in the olden days — when I was your age and I had to walk to school every day, in the snow, uphill, both ways! — $80 was a good price for a memory card, but it only stored 128MB — yes, 128 megabytes! That was in 2001. These days, for $80, you can store 16 gigabytes on a single memory card, which is 128 times the amount of data that you could store on a memory card just 7 years ago. 16 gigabytes (GB) can store a lot of photos, and you probably don’t need that much to carry around with you; a few smaller and much less expensive cards would probably be better for you. But in any case, you have plenty of storage. You don’t need to be deleting photos to save space.
2. LCD screens don’t show enough detail. If you don’t like the photo just by looking at the LCD screen, keep in mind that you’re not seeing all of the details in the photo. As Jason Paterson writes, “Your camera’s LCD screen lies to you. It’s a liar.” He explains that most cameras have LCD screens with roughly 0.25 megapixels. Compare that with your camera which may be able to capture, say, 5 megapixels. As Jason further explains, “It’s pretty hard to see details on screens that are low quality, so you may be deleting a picture that will actually look much better on your computer screen.”
3. Save your battery power. LCD screens are one of the most power-hungry features of digital cameras. The less you use your LCD screen, the more battery power you will have for later. You can still use your LCD screen, but try not to use it to spend time reviewing and deleting photos.
4. Camera buttons and menus are often difficult to use. As careful as you are, you might accidentally delete the wrong photo. This usually happens when you’re deleting multiple photos in succession. Yes, it’s possible to try to recover deleted photos from your memory card, but it can be time-consuming and difficult for novices, and you shouldn’t continue to use your memory card after you delete a photo that you want to recover because the photo may then be overwritten and unrecoverable.
5. “You’re going to miss everything you want to shoot,” advises Luiz Cruz. When you spend time reviewing and deleting images, your time is wasted when you could be shooting. Photography is all about shooting, and taking as many photos as possible, hoping to get the perfect shot. You’ll have plenty of time to review your shots later. Keep shooting so you don’t miss the action.
6. You can learn from your mistakes. Photography is a learning experience, and the best way to learn how to shoot better is to shoot a lot of photos and review them. Even after you become pro, there’s still much to learn. Cory Redmon says, “I even see from time to time that the blurred or rejected image had the proper positioning or crop, so they’re good to learn from, even if you can’t ultimately use the photo.”
7. Gems will appear months later, such as “Beauty in Motion” by David Hammond, shown above. You may not find the gems right away, perhaps because you were looking for another specific kind of shot. But later on, when you review your photos again, you’ll find great photos that you didn’t “see” before. Luiz Cruz adds: “I keep pretty much all my shots too — and for the same reasons. Sometimes, you don’t see the gems until you go through your archives weeks, months, or even years later.”
If you want to delete photos, delete them only on your computer — after you’ve had time to step away from the action and review the photos, and after you’ve made multiple backups of them.
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