I don’t delete raw files and I only shoot raw. I might delete jpegs or xcfs or tiffs if I don’t like them.
With that much data you might look at a deduplicating file system like ZFS! Compression might help a little as well.
I don’t shoot video so I’m not in the know, although my Yi M1 does 4K… I guess I’ll have to give it a shot.
I never delete source though!
Culling is a pretty theoretical concept for me. It basically means marking the photos of my lens cap and these that are way out of focus as “ready to delete”. Of course not all of the out-of-focus ones, some of them may turn out as “real art” some day. Of course I am kidding regarding the last point. However, workflow-wise, that’s it, basically. Up to now, the hard drive industry kept pace with my demand and I never actually had to delete files. Luckily, there have always been some 100 GB of an unused disk image or something else that could be deleted.
I delete a lot of them. When I first look at my pictures, a good half goes to the bitbucket immediately for technical reasons (bad focus, motion blur…) (it’s a good half after a recent camera upgrade, before that it was a good there quarters). Several weeks later three quarters of the survivors are thrown away for lack of goodness… I don’t keep the raw files for these.
Then there are the shots I make when I’m shutter-happy: family gatherings, air shows, motorcycles races and various animals… and it’s even worse, because except for a few very good shots which I may very hypothetically try to improve by re-processing them from raw, I know the other ones will only be used as camera-produced JPEGs, so I mercilessly erase most of the raw files.
There’s a couple different issues (I think) we’re dealing with. One is that the $ of storage keeps on, or low enough not to delete anything. That’s very relative to the medium one uses and the quantity of work one produces. Also MAY boost lazyness.
On the other hand is the culling: the process of selecting for acceptance or removal. I understand and respect anybody who doesn’t have the time or decides not to delete anything, nevertheless I cannot erase that I’ve experienced first hand how much one can learn (about your skills, your taste, your positioning before an “event”, before beauty) by culling/editing(trimming)/curating your stuff.
IMO first thing a serious - and “serious” does not have mood or pro tags, but love of imaging, love of the process - is a deep relation with aesthetics (also not talking about museum and history, though that may be enriching too) so one can develop one’s own {way of seing}. To me, dealing with the “good” ones is just as part of that process as of dealing with the “bad” ones that one ends up letting go. With time and practice, not only one works faster, produces less “bad” ones as it also keeps flexible for everybody knows the usefulness of useful things but few know the usefulness of unuseful things {old chinese saying}
As an example, when editing video many times pearl-shots are ditched away in prol of more mediocre ones that when together happen to convey better an emotion, follow the action, the story, etc. But don’t want to get much into these stuff 'cause I understand my view may be quite different from most pips as I try to have an holistic, intuition based approach to photography in particular and life in general. Cheers 
I don’t shoot video so I’m not in the know, although my Yi M1 does 4K… I guess I’ll have to give it a shot.
@paperdigits you totally have to give it, at least, 1 shot =)
I never delete source though!
No, leave god alone 
To be fair, I do enjoy the art of culling and curating as it relates to further down the process for me. That is, I’m happy to curate the final shots that I will process and publish or include in a series. So that bit of photography zen still exists for me. It’s just the thought that right-now Pat might know better than much-later Pat what he wants to see or possibly re-visit… 
My culling involves using geeqie to browse raw files, then opening them in darktable and adding a tag or two!
It’s just the thought that right-now Pat might know better than much-later Pat what he wants to see or possibly re-visit…
@patdavid Probably many people feel this way. Maybe, just maybe could be interesting to do a little experiment; keeping the whole shibang in a separate storage and dealing with a tight cull of curated motherfu…masterpieces. Would be interesting to understand if the future you, the future me would miss those deleted photos {that are alive and well, drinking zubrowska in the ext HD}. Just a silly idea 
This is about my idea of culling. If it survives that cut it’s probably never getting deleted. Aside from anything else, a photo that might seem weak to me today might benefit from a crop I didn’t think of today or a few processing tricks I have yet to learn. Not every shot is going to rise from the ashes, but for sure no deleted shot will.
If it survives that cut it’s probably never getting deleted.
On the other hand, sometimes I’ll go back and cull from the archives too. It’s never to late to delete a meaningless blur.
I am in the “don’t delete it camp”
I only delete an image if it is out of focus / really bad or I clicked by mistake.
I tend to have lots of duplicates too as when I am doing my “100 strangers” street portraits, I let the camera shoot on continuous (to ensure I don’t get closed eyes etc). In fact I sometimes do continuous for landscapes !!!
Pressing that “delete key” is just so difficult to do. Even when I press delete, I kind of pause my fingers and hover before doing it !
Definitely a RTDS (Reluctant to Delete Syndrome) going on in this thread
Oh and I shoot in “RAW + Large Jpeg” on my SLR’s !!
I am only an amateur too !
Have a nice day
Yes, I think it is a good idea on the long run. Taking the last private family shooting project with our kids: From 350 images 290 got deleted. With kids in action under dim light the keeper rate is really low, because most of the shots have been out of focus. Nobody, except me, will look at this 290 delete shots again. So, why keep them?
I know storage is cheap now, but you still have to do backups and if you don’t take care the amount of backups grows and grows…
Overall, I keep 50-60% of my images. My DSLR has +21k klicks since I switched to RAW and I have 13k RAW in darktable. I tag my images as well, which takes quite some time 
. I’ve two lua moduls to speed it up a bit. The lighttable mode in darktable is fast enough, even if thumbs need to be regenerated.
Not every shot is going to rise from the ashes, but for sure no deleted shot will.
Devil’s advocate: the ones that could rise from the ashes are the ones you remember… and you wouldn’t delete these anyway.
Everyone is different and each to his own but I don’t understand keeping bad images. Yes, storage is cheap but ‘to me’ it is much like a hoarder keeping useless junk because he might need it some day.
So I wade through mine, cull anything that I know is no good, deleting most of what I shoot.
Yes, I have gone back and saved an image that I rejected before but if it had potential I kept it. I know that editing improves with skill and technology but a bad image will always be a bad image. Some just don’t cut it. So if it is an bad ones that I get rid of.
I can see the reason that some bad shots might be kept, I have a few I just like. Friends and family I totally understand. I am old enough I have lost a few realatives and friends and want even the bad photos.
If it makes it past the Delete button on the camera, I keep it, unless I later find some egregious focus issue I couldn’t see on the camera LCD. Yes, I chimp. Unashamed.
Devil’s advocate part deux…you can miss shots because you are reviewing and culling shots on the camera. IMHO better to leave the deleting until you get home. I know I’ve had the “one more &$&$ button press and I coulda caught that” moment more than once. So now when I’m shootin’ I’m just shootin’.
I did not mean to start a Holly war but looks like I did so. Sorry about that… but I am enjoying reading all the answers to be honestly.
As for the subject, I think I am going to stick to the plan - delete a sh…t out of my pictures. LOL
Me too. I always find it interesting to see how different people go about their workflow. It often exposes something I have never thought of.
I guess that’s it for me, I do ~90 % photos of family and friends and their/our events. I started scanning negatives of my childhood recently and am happy of every shot, not just the sharpest ones. I wish photographing had been cheaper in the 80’s, there are huge time gaps even in one roll of film. And, I wish they had metadata then, it is extremely difficult even to find out the year a photo was taken.
@ggbutcher,
I will have to agree with @elGordo. Sometimes I even don’t delete pictures from my phone (which has a very good screen by the way) because I might like them when viewing in my desktop.
Have you tried to think before press the camera button?