How long do you keep your raw files for?

I just shoot in bog standard RAW, none of this sRAW malarky. They do take up more space, but it's the only way to get the best out of them imho. Forgot to say above, I do keep all the keepsies forever as well. Come to think of it, I do need a new hard drive!
 
Dan76 said:
I just shoot in bog standard RAW, none of this sRAW malarky. They do take up more space, but it's the only way to get the best out of them imho. Forgot to say above, I do keep all the keepsies forever as well. Come to think of it, I do need a new hard drive!
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sRAW from memory is a Canon LOSSY compressed RAW file ie. YOU LOSE DETAIL.

compressed lossless RAW is a compressed RAW file with NO LOSS OF DATA AT ALL so it is smaller without any loss at all - This means it takes up less space and transfers to your computer quicker too. Like a ZIP file!
 
All the pics I keep, I keep the RAW too....

I'm forever learning (and re-learning!) and it's not unknown for me to revisit files from a year or three back and have another interpretation.

-Rob
 
CT said:
Keep 'em forever hopefully. I keep all mine and have them backed up on 3 separate drives - storage is pretty cheap these days.

You summed up the reason for keeping them yourself - you can always go back to that RAW file and start with a blank sheet.
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Ditto....although the ones that are deffo not 'keepers' get deleted in the initial sort out....
 
Same here, I keep mine forever, convert them to DNG, then delete the NEF files then store the DNG ones mirrored on external hard drive,s and backs up to DVD.
 
For ever and ever amen, on a couple of drives. You'll never know when they won't come in useful.
 
cowasaki said:
How many shots do you take at a wedding? Do you shoot lossless compressed RAW? That does seem like rather a lot.
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It varies a lot but somewhere between 600-ish and maybe 1800 14 bit uncompressed raw.
 
With 1TB drives becoming more common and cheap keeping RAW files makes sense. I only delete the 'bad' ones (i.e. technical error or a complete lack of interest). I am very reluctant to use CDs or DVDs since I had a very high rate of media failure after about a year (both Sony and Verbatim, some others can't even record properly).

I have around 50GB of data so it is still very reasonable.
 
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