TO DELETE OR NOT DELETE ?
Like most photographers Michael Freeman has a very considered response to the question of how much to delete or keep…
What percentage of shots do you delete?
I only delete out and out massive errors. I shoot RAW, so there’s a place for the RAW files, and then there’s another place for the processed images. One of the things I realised a long time ago was that software will always improve and things that can’t be done at one point can be done later. For instance, if you have an underexposed image that’s part of a sequence it can still be useful. It doesn’t have to be in register because the software can deal with that. If an image is slightly out of focus, up to 20 pixels, deconvolution software will bring it back. Astrophotography is the prime example. If you can calculate what the lens did to turn a star dot into a small disc mathematically, then you can reverse-engineer that to the image to restore the focus. So why throw stuff away if it’s not doing any harm? Storage space is so cheap these days.