Stop! Don’t delete that image in camera!
I’ve witnessed this many times while out taking photographs with people. They quickly click through images using the screen on their camera and start deleting away. It makes me cringe and I almost always give them a little bit of advice — you might want to wait to look at those on your larger screen.
You never know what you’re missing
Looking on the camera screen is fine for just checking settings, making sure your exposure is correct and seeing if your subject is in focus or not. But it’s not really fine for assessing the overall usability of your images. Why? For one, the screens are small. Even the larger screens are not large enough to really see if an image is a keeper or not. Two, the light is usually horrible no matter where you are, making it difficult to truly see how good or bad an image is.
Editing is powerful, wait to delete
Even the ‘bad’ images can be made to work with a little bit of editing magic. Cameras today are capable of capturing a much wider dynamic range, this means you have more room to pull out details and shadows in images that may not be exposed quite right. Software is also quite amazing in helping us to be more creative. Images that may have been throwaways can be turned into more artistic and creative interpretations.
I knew these would be dark when I shot them but the light behind her made me want to shoot it that way anyway. Why? Because I knew I could play with my editing tools to see what I could pull out of it, I knew it was a good spot to shoot and a good pose. Instead of saying, “oh no, this will never work,” I took the photos anyway.
To get to this black and white image I tried out a bunch of different presets just to see what could be done. I found one that I liked and continued tweaking the image from there. Decreasing the contrast worked wonders on lightening the image, then I used a graduated filter to help even out the exposure from right to left. With a little time and patience, you can do amazing things with the software options that are out there today. If I had deleted it in camera I wouldn’t have been able to work with it.
Art is subjective
You can create anything you want from an image. Maybe it’s not what you intended but the shot has a really nice color or motion to it. There are many photographers who also create digital art from their images using software to manipulate images into something entirely different from what was shot. I’m reminded of the twirls that can be created in Adobe Photoshop. The use of apps to create painterly-like images, tiny planets, cartoonlike and a myriad other options can take a ‘bad’ image that you deleted and make it into an abstract art piece.
When I shot this I could see the ‘eye’ in the waves of the water and while I really had no intention of keeping this image after I starting playing with it for a while, the more I liked it. A little crop, some color enhancing and that was it. It worked for a series of water in motion that I was working on. It doesn’t always take much to make something out of an image you may have otherwise deleted in-camera.
Experiment and play
I say this over and over again to those I mentor. Experimenting and playing are instrumental in learning, creating and growing as artists. How do you know if an image is not salvageable if you delete it in camera and don’t even try?
I take great care to 1) Not overshoot a scene 2) Always consider another angle or POV if there’s time 3) Know my wheat from my chaf. Taking an observation from Henry Moore to heart: “If a sculpture doesn’t look good as a small maquette, it won’t be any better enlarged to scale”. I don’t pay attention to every detail on the screen but if the shot itself doesn’t affect in some tangible way, it’s not going to be any more effective blown up, just bigger. There has been an annoying tendency ih galleries to blow up banal images to… Read more »
@terry_sanders:disqus All good points and I agree with you on the huge images just being impressive because they are huge. Thank you for your input.
Yes and no. I see what you’re getting at, however, I agree with the previous comment. It is true for me, in all instances where I shoot. If it’s work for a client, not only is it a quick glance at a shot for composition/exposure check, but it’s also zooming in on the LCD screen to confirm focus. It’s important, in that instance, to cull as you go… you don’t always have the ability to edit later. And it’s bad form to turn in too many sub-par shots. For my own personal/artistic photography, I do the same (brianwashed or trained… Read more »
@disqus_uRQVNZwmht:disqus thanks for your input and knowing what you do I can see how and why deleting as you go is beneficial for several reasons.
Just a bit of a side note, it’s also been pointed out to me that deleting directly from the card in camera shortens the life of the card and makes it more susceptible to error/corruption. Personally I’ve only ever had one card (knock on wood) go bad on me.
That’s one more than I have. I’ve heard that as well, but have yet to have it happen in practice. I have some pretty ancient cards in circulation. I don’t delete the images from the card via my laptop, however. I leave everything on the card and format in-camera. Maybe that makes a difference… **shrug**
I did have failure happen with one of my clients’ cards a couple of weekends ago, but it wasn’t a matter of corruption… instead, the SD card was split and nearly fell apart in my hands. That’s problematic.
Formatting in camera is the best way to do it. I have really old cards as well so maybe that’s not as big of an issue as it used to be, better cards, better tech? Just passing on info someone passed on to me. In the end it’s all tech and all tech can go bad no matter what we do.
I don’t delete anything other than blank images because post-process software is getting better all the time and images I graded as low years or even a year ago can be recovered into usable images. I used to shoot agfachrome slides years ago. It had huge noise making it unusable for anything other than memories. But with the latest versions of software like On1 NoNoise I can get rid of the noise basically with a click. I’m now processing those old images and getting beautiful images worthy of printing.
An excellent point. Thank you Ed, for bringing that up.
I never delete any image, fullstop.
Ever? In this day and age of relatively cheap storage, I can see that point as well. Thank you Jonathan.
This is not intended to be a snarky comment but you apparently never photographed sports, where “bad” images are obvious and take time to load and then delete in post.
Thanks, Craig – it depends on how much time you have I suppose when shooting to delete images. I still prefer to see the shots on a larger screen before I make the decision to delete them. I did shoot cyclocross for several years, not maybe as fast as auto racing but still not time to delete. In my opinion, it takes time to go through them on your camera screen as well as on your larger screen. In the end, it’s all personal preference.