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I always wondered why photographers held on to negatives/raw files for so long. How often does the need to return years later come up, and can that justify the

by op00to 3y ago

I always wondered why photographers held on to negatives/raw files for so long. How often does the need to return years later come up, and can that justify the cost of storing all that in a way that’s somewhat reliable? I’m not saying there aren’t valid reasons to do so, and throwing the pictures on a few externals drives isn’t terrible, but to do it “right” seems like it would be super expensive!

bayindirh 3y ago
Because better hardware gets cheaper, and one's technique and software improves over time. I was able to recover a 13 year old photo I took with a D70s which was extremely noisy. By using what I learnt and state of the art software (which is Darktable), I was able to extract a very nice photo out of it. Also, as your style improves and experience piles up, you look to your "bad" photos and say "Aha, there's a nice angle here. Let's process this". You can see some of my "Remastered" photos at [0]. [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/72157702429561602/with/29340231528 https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/7215770242956...
- eurekin 3y ago
  I wonder how would you react to the DeepPRIME* from DxO https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ I have a license for some older version, if you want to throw a .nef at me
  - bayindirh 3y ago
    That looks pretty nice. I'll try to find some noisy files to send to you. What's nice about Darktable is it has a feature called "profiled denoise". Contributors send in calibrated RAW files per camera, taken at every ISO setting possible, so Darktable denoises your file according to your camera's profile at particular ISO. The result is pretty impressive. I have uploaded that particular image to [0]. Taken in 2006 and processed in 2020, after 14 years! [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/datep... Edit: EXIF says 2005, but it should be 2006.
eurekin 3y ago
Oh, I'd throw them away in a blink, If I were not lazy: Almost after every shoot, people come back "remember that one photo, where I smiled at sth? I'm very sentimental about that, cause it's [some important thing to them]", which necessitates the need to hold on to every photo taken on the session. So no real deletes here, even if it came out technically wrong (blurry, blown out, etc.). Those requests lessen, but don't die down completely. Especially with cyclic events, organizers have this habit of a asking for things done exactly year ago. Some just say: "hey, I remember you taking a photo of me then and then" for their dancing portfolio in my case. Especially for videos, which can be a constant flow of editing requests, for supercuts and etc. Now, if I were really smart, I'd just have some good way to archive after two years, and delete after - let's say three years. In practice though, there are so many unforseen circumstances that a habit of "never delete anything" forms really easily. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to buy another drive instead of culling 10k of photos every once in a while, especially if external confirmation is involved.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  You could also back up to something like AWS Glacier. The cheapest tier (access less than once a year) is $1/TB/month. Maybe if you kept thumbnails locally, you could push all the data up and only pull it as and when you needed it.
  - nik736 3y ago
    Have fun paying a fortune if you need to get those files again.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      If you need all of them, and can wait 5-12 hours, that appears to be free to request and transfer? Or am I misreading[0]? [0] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request_pricing https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request... <- under "Bulk"
      - 3y ago

by op00to 3y ago

bayindirh 3y ago

Because better hardware gets cheaper, and one's technique and software improves over time. I was able to recover a 13 year old photo I took with a D70s which was extremely noisy. By using what I learnt and state of the art software (which is Darktable), I was able to extract a very nice photo out of it. Also, as your style improves and experience piles up, you look to your "bad" photos and say "Aha, there's a nice angle here. Let's process this". You can see some of my "Remastered" photos at [0]. [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/72157702429561602/with/29340231528 https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/albums/7215770242956...

eurekin 3y ago
I wonder how would you react to the DeepPRIME* from DxO https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ https://www.dxo.com/fr/technology/deepprime/ I have a license for some older version, if you want to throw a .nef at me
- bayindirh 3y ago
  That looks pretty nice. I'll try to find some noisy files to send to you. What's nice about Darktable is it has a feature called "profiled denoise". Contributors send in calibrated RAW files per camera, taken at every ISO setting possible, so Darktable denoises your file according to your camera's profile at particular ISO. The result is pretty impressive. I have uploaded that particular image to [0]. Taken in 2006 and processed in 2020, after 14 years! [0]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/zerocoder/53363865806/in/datep... Edit: EXIF says 2005, but it should be 2006.

eurekin 3y ago

Oh, I'd throw them away in a blink, If I were not lazy: Almost after every shoot, people come back "remember that one photo, where I smiled at sth? I'm very sentimental about that, cause it's [some important thing to them]", which necessitates the need to hold on to every photo taken on the session. So no real deletes here, even if it came out technically wrong (blurry, blown out, etc.). Those requests lessen, but don't die down completely. Especially with cyclic events, organizers have this habit of a asking for things done exactly year ago. Some just say: "hey, I remember you taking a photo of me then and then" for their dancing portfolio in my case. Especially for videos, which can be a constant flow of editing requests, for supercuts and etc. Now, if I were really smart, I'd just have some good way to archive after two years, and delete after - let's say three years. In practice though, there are so many unforseen circumstances that a habit of "never delete anything" forms really easily. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to buy another drive instead of culling 10k of photos every once in a while, especially if external confirmation is involved.

robertlagrant 3y ago
You could also back up to something like AWS Glacier. The cheapest tier (access less than once a year) is $1/TB/month. Maybe if you kept thumbnails locally, you could push all the data up and only pull it as and when you needed it.
- nik736 3y ago
  Have fun paying a fortune if you need to get those files again.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    If you need all of them, and can wait 5-12 hours, that appears to be free to request and transfer? Or am I misreading[0]? [0] https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request_pricing https://aws.amazon.com/s3/glacier/pricing/#Retrieval_request... <- under "Bulk"
    - 3y ago