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Proposal for "quasi deletion" of image files on an SD card
- Thread starter boblite
- Start date
If you believe that to be true why delete anything before the upload? Just upload everything, view and delete from your hard drive.
Once you know your files are safely copied (and backed up) just format the card in your camera or delete the files using the camera interface and go take more pictures.
techjedi
Senior Member
First, as others have noted, deleting files on an SD card from a PC/Mac will not corrupt the file table in normal circumstances.
Second, as others have noted, some cameras maintain a proprietary database of images taken. So if you delete a file, then put the card back in the camera, it might report the image file name is still there, but its contents are missing or corrupt because its still expecting it to be there.
My workflow avoids any of this confusion.
1) Always copy contents of SD card to a temporary location on PC
2) Place SD card in a holding area until my nightly backup copies new images to backup system. Once that backup happens, the card is now fair game to format and re-use. In the meantime, use a different empty card already backed up.
3) Review/Cull images copied to temporary location, decide which to keep and which to delete. Don't worry about the SD card since you are doing it local to the PC. It will be faster from the PC and you don't have to worry about card databases, etc.
I find that importing files to slow photo managers and then sorting out pictures is much slower than it would be if you throw out the bad ones at the very beginning. Especially when 90% of the shots are useless.
Your way seems to be creating some anxiety, the way most of us do it will eliminate that anxiety.
You never really explained why your way and the "quasi deletion" you are proposing is a better way.
sybersitizen
Forum Pro
Statements to the contrary involve problems with proprietary databases maintained by the cameras. In such cases, the database can become confused (not corrupted) because files have been deleted without the database being updated. Then the database has to be rebuilt to only include the files that are still present. That can happen easily with Sony cameras. If your cameras don't maintain their own databases there will be no confusion.
So do it. Test by making numerous deletions on a card from which you have already copied the files you need. Find out for yourself. And don't forget to periodically format the card in the camera to allow it to 'start fresh'.
Last edited:
TacticDesigns
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Ok.
Two different alternative ideas . . . one that I am already using . . . and another one that may be useful.
1. Write-protect files in-camera
Ok. This is something that I already do. I've been doing it for years.
When I shoot gymnastics or cheer, I shoot a lot.
But then I have dead time between the teams that I shoot.
In the past, I have waited until I got home to sort through all the shots. This would take forever and my mind would go numb.
But . . . I realized . . . in between runs, while I am there sitting waiting, I can go through the pictures on my camera and simply "write-protect" the files that I think are useable.
Then, when I get home, I back-up the entire SD card to a backup hard drive, but I only copy over the write-protected files to Lightroom. So . . . I have already made the first pass of selection before I even get home.
So I am not going so crazy when I get home.
I can sort through hundreds and hundreds of shots from a competition weekend and get the final pictures out after a couple of days.
2. Why not have the camera be able to embed a rating into the file.
So . . . match it up with Lightroom so some sort of standard.
While you are going through the files on your camera, you can rate a file 1-5 and/or flag a file with a different colour.
And when you import the file into Lightroom, it would pull in this info and it would appear in Lightroom.
My waterproof Fujifilm XP80 compact camera actually has a "favourites" feature where you can rate a picture 0-5. I've not taken too close a look at this feature. And I don't know if it an in-camera only thing, something that only works with Fujifilm software or whether that rating gets pulled into editing software like Lightroom.
Take care & Happy Shooting!
M
Mark B.
Guest
What camera?
Barry Twycross
Senior Member
Panasonic LF1
M
Mark B.
Guest
Are you sure? Page 64 of the manual I just looked up shows a [format] option in the Setup menu.
Barry Twycross
Senior Member
Not totally, I think it arrived in a firmware update.
I couldn't find it when I needed it, there was only "Erase Card" which didn't help when the card was formatted HFS+ with a GUID partition map. I had to reformat the card as an MBR FAT32 before the camera would even acknowledge that the card was there.
Page 64 of the manual I just looked up shows a [format] option in the Setup menu.
donaldsc
Senior Member
Since it is so "well known" at least to you, please provide some backup to your statement. Basically, I think that you are full of cr**.
M
Mark B.
Guest
I'm going to go with what's shown in the manual. Doesn't make sense that a camera wouldn't have a format option.Not totally, I think it arrived in a firmware update.
I couldn't find it when I needed it, there was only "Erase Card" which didn't help when the card was formatted HFS+ with a GUID partition map. I had to reformat the card as an MBR FAT32 before the camera would even acknowledge that the card was there.
Page 64 of the manual I just looked up shows a [format] option in the Setup menu.
techjedi
Senior Member
You know, you could have read some of the other messages by the OP in this thread and realized that he is a pretty reasonable person that just found some bad information.
Instead you look like an ignorant jerk, too lazy to do anything except throw negativity where it didn't exist and is not welcome.
As you found later, it is not true there are problems deleting files form SD card using Windows Explorer. Plenty of people do that (including me) and have no problems at all.
Things that corrupts files is if you interrupt the process unexpectedly. For example pulling the SD card out without ejecting it first in the software interface, or if using USB suddenly pulling the cable without safely removing device first, or suddenly cutting the power.
The others brought up the other point that some cameras may build their own file index separate from the SD card's file system and using windows to delete files can confuse that system.
Good idea ! In my own case there is usually no slack period. My doc advised me to walk, and I walk for about an hour each today, and take pix of anything that strikes me as interesting. Then after a few days I do a fast review of what I took, which comes to maybe 150-300 or so pix. Usually I have no interest in categorizing or rating at that point in time . My focus is on seeing what worked and what did not work rather than categorizing. It is at this point that I would like to delete bad pix from the SD card.
Then every once in a long while I will sit down with a post processor (currently Corel Paint Shop Pro) and categorize the accumulated haul, which may be as much as several thousand pix. It's much easier to do this when bad pix have already been thrown out.
Then every once in a long while I will sit down with a post processor (currently Corel Paint Shop Pro) and categorize the accumulated haul, which may be as much as several thousand pix. It's much easier to do this when bad pix have already been thrown out.
Thanks to the commenters who pointed out I was wrong in assuming that deleting files from an SD card will corrupt it, which caused me to do a bit of research...
I found no authoritative support for my assumption when I googled quite extensively (though I did find quite a few posts asserting that file deletion can cause SD corruption).
And neither did I find support for my assumption when I searched my camera manuals (3 Lumixes, 2 Nikons).
Thanks especially to commenters who reported their own experience, namely that they have deleted files from SD cards with no ill effects.
SO, I'm going to try it myself, and will report back if indeed there appears to be corruption that was not produced by bad moves (like removing a card before Windows says it is is safe to do so).
I found no authoritative support for my assumption when I googled quite extensively (though I did find quite a few posts asserting that file deletion can cause SD corruption).
And neither did I find support for my assumption when I searched my camera manuals (3 Lumixes, 2 Nikons).
Thanks especially to commenters who reported their own experience, namely that they have deleted files from SD cards with no ill effects.
SO, I'm going to try it myself, and will report back if indeed there appears to be corruption that was not produced by bad moves (like removing a card before Windows says it is is safe to do so).
Several commenters have said they find my workflow illogical... have asked why I don't just copy all pix from the SD card to the PC and sort them out there.
To recapitulate, my desired work flow is as follows:
[1] Delete bad pix on the SD card using a fast editor like Irfanview
[2] Copy remaining pix for later categorization and possible editing with software that has slow or limited photo management but good photo processing.
My reason for doing things this way is that, as I note elsewhere, I take huge numbers of pix, about 90 per cent of them bad.
I don't want to flood my current choice of photo editor (Corel Paint Shop Pro) with giant numbers of pix because in my experience it does not handle giant numbers well. Also, I want to make it easy to use other photo editors because I've already purged bad pix and have a much smaller subset to deal with.
P.S. I don't reformat SD cards. I keep them as backup. Used cards would even fit in my bank safe deposit box which has severe space limitations.
P.P.S. Rather than delete files from the SD card it would be nice if there were a dedicated ultra fast photo manager where as each picture pops up, the user can type a code like 1 for excellent, 2 for acceptable, 3 for bad, and the first character of the file name is replaced with the code and the next pic pops up very fast. This would provide a sort of preliminary triage. Then one would copy all the files from the SD card to the PC. And process the desired subset. WIthout throwing anything away. There might come a day when a bad shot might contain valuable information........
To recapitulate, my desired work flow is as follows:
[1] Delete bad pix on the SD card using a fast editor like Irfanview
[2] Copy remaining pix for later categorization and possible editing with software that has slow or limited photo management but good photo processing.
My reason for doing things this way is that, as I note elsewhere, I take huge numbers of pix, about 90 per cent of them bad.
I don't want to flood my current choice of photo editor (Corel Paint Shop Pro) with giant numbers of pix because in my experience it does not handle giant numbers well. Also, I want to make it easy to use other photo editors because I've already purged bad pix and have a much smaller subset to deal with.
P.S. I don't reformat SD cards. I keep them as backup. Used cards would even fit in my bank safe deposit box which has severe space limitations.
P.P.S. Rather than delete files from the SD card it would be nice if there were a dedicated ultra fast photo manager where as each picture pops up, the user can type a code like 1 for excellent, 2 for acceptable, 3 for bad, and the first character of the file name is replaced with the code and the next pic pops up very fast. This would provide a sort of preliminary triage. Then one would copy all the files from the SD card to the PC. And process the desired subset. WIthout throwing anything away. There might come a day when a bad shot might contain valuable information........
TacticDesigns
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+1
For down time, it could be as you are sitting down to eat. Or if you find yourself sitting down somewhere waiting.
For gymnastics, I would select pictures between the flights of athletes. For cheer competitions I do it while I wait for the next team from our club to go up.
As for deleting images.
For me, I wanted to try to figure out how to speed up my processing using only the camera so that I didn't have to pull out a separate computer to start the process.
But I didn't want to delete images off the SD card, just in case I ended up accidentally deleting an image I meant to keep. If I did that, I'd have to swap SD cards right away so that I had a chance to recover the accidentally deleted image. But not deleting in-camera I don't run the risk of accidentally deleting something that I could use later.
So . . . I came around to figuring out that what I wanted could be accomplished by simply "write-protecting" the image on the SD Card with the camera.
By doing it this way, I haven't deleted any images. If I ended up needing to use one of those extra images, it would be in my back-up drive where I back-up the entire day's shoot.
But where it saved me time was that when I finally got my pictures into Lightroom, I already had a lot less pictures to pick from.
+1
That is it for me.
I would shoot between 5-10 teams in a day. Each team I might take 100-200 pictures of their routine. At the end of the day I could have taken 2,000 pictures.
By selecting the "keepers" in camera and flagging them by "write-protecting" the files, I end up with maybe 50 shots per team. So I end up with around 250 to 500 images to sort through on my computer when I get home.
And often, its a matter of picking the nicest picture out of 3 similar pictures. I over select on the camera because of the smaller screen. But when I look at the image on my monitor, it is pretty quick to pick my favourite.
So . . . by the time I get home, I've already gotten rid of 1/2 if not 2/3 of the pictures to review already.
Take care & Happy Shooting!
Barry Twycross
Senior Member
SD cards are not an archival medium. So that's not a useful thing to do with an SD card.
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