Originally posted by Chex Having a stockpile of old jpegs from P&S's thrown on a 1.5TB drive doesn't take up much room. Now with the K-5 I intend to get 2 2TB drives and mirror them(raid1) so I always have a backup if one drive craps out. 2TB will last a long time as each year you go back and try to streamline your collection of keepers. And for those who want backups for the business side of photography, simply offering your client 1 year after the shoot before the data is lost (other than shots you want to keep for your portfolio) is more than enough time. Even then the number of shots you would normally keep for a portfolio should fit on a DL DVD or a USB memory stick (they are getting very big now days!).
You probably missed this because you seemed to have missed most of the points of my post, but the DS, K10, K20, and K-7 aren't P&S cameras, and I don't cull my old shots because I do this for fun. You don't seem to be able to fathom that different people get different things out of photography.
I shoot birds because I like to, and I like being able to go over the shots I took, examine the differences from year to year, note the progression, or lack thereof and try to correlate these with changes in gear and changes in technique. I do this to plan out the coming season of shooting and often re-incorporate some of the old thoughts and methods into my present shooting style.
I choose to do this because I don't take myself and my hobby so seriously that I feel the need to perceive that I must squeeze the last bit of IQ out of every shot. Photography only costs me money, I purposefully make nothing back from it. I have never sold a photograph and refuse to do so. I've had requests, and normally just give away the prints if someone shows what I feel is a genuine appreciation for them. I donated a bunch of prints to the local Nature Center that they use in their Naturalist displays. What I've gotten back from photography is about 10 years of reasonably active life, a whole lot of satisfaction in accomplishment, and some photos that illustrate my fascination with nature and a different perspective that I can share with others.
If you really read my post, it actually repeatedly pointed to the potential technical superiority of RAW vs Jpeg, and I think that you'll find in the various similar threads that I pointed to that most, if not all Jpeg shooters acknowledge this, but shoot Jpegs anyway for whatever reason, suggesting the OP to try both and make their own choice. It's usually the RAW shooters that get all huffy and try to convince everyone that if you don't shoot RAW, you're not a "serious" photographer.
I'll point out at this time that ALL camera mfgs have devoted a serious amount of time and effort (and R&D money) to provide an incredibly wide selection of in-camera image parameter tweaks and features that are only valid for Jpeg output in their
highest grade semi pro and professional models. This aspect of the feature set is constantly expanding, so is obviously considered a priority. If this issue is so clear cut, why do they bother? It should also be mentioned that enough users of all brands of DSLRs who shoot RAW use third party RAW converters to make this a very profitable genre of software development. If top performing bodies and the supposedly serious photographers that would buy them were really meant to shoot RAW only, why wouldn't the camera mfgs be offering the most sophisticated RAW processors, dedicated to their proprietary RAW formats?
I was just trying to present what I felt was a reasonably objective overview of the controversy from a hobbiest shooter -- a pretty serious one -- who has heard all the arguments, seriously considered them with numerous cameras, and has made a conscious decision to shoot Jpegs in a very technically demanding genre of photography.
I'm not trying to convince you -- just defending my post -- which I stand by. . .
Scott