Culling in the field

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I read this thread with a lot of interest as culling has always been my least favorite activity. I only recently moved into BIF and with my A1 able to shoot at 20 fps, culling has taken on a whole new level of tediousness. I've started to address this by understanding when I needed to shoot at what speeds. Many times 10 fps is sufficient for me. The second thing I've done is look at culling tools. FastRawViewer is software I bought for $17.99. I quickly go through and check the ones that are "close" by moving them to a _Keepers folder (the documentation tells you how to do this). I try to do this quickly. Then I only import the keepers into LR and further cull from there.

I've found two other products: Narrative Select and Aftershoot. They are both especially for people shots (great for wedding photographers), but I've had some dialogue with the Narrative Select people and I think it has pretty good potential for wildlife, also, and will continue to evolve to be better for us wildlife photographers. I am going to give that a shot before too much longer.

I do agree with Steve's comments about the drawbacks of culling on your camera in the field. He lays out all of the things I was thinking of so I won't repeat them all. But I do want to emphasize the point that while you are culling on your camera, you are distracted from other photo opportunities, not enjoying the moment, and might miss a lot of good shots. I might add the toll it will take on your battery, but I guess if taking along an extra battery would solve my culling problem that would be a small price to pay.

But please keep the dialogue going. I will be going to Costa Rica for a couple of weeks next March and recently read of a photographer that shot about 18,000 pictures on such a trip. That is exciting and frightening all at the same time. Today I've been using these small Crucial USB-C drives to store my pictures and (temporary) catalog on when I travel. The drives are 1TB. Well, I did the math and 1TB is not going to hold 18000 RAW Sony A1 pics and 2 TB is just barely enough. So if I go to the 4TB (and I need two of them obviously), it starts to get very expensive. I guess I could get a regular spinning hard drive at an affordable price but I don't like them for travel as they more delicate (not to mention being a lot slower). Whew! Well enough. I realize this is a first world problem and if this is all I have to complain about I should consider myself blessed.
 
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Those of you that cull in the field because you know Lightroom will be too slow (to import them all first, then cull): use another program, a much faster "viewer only" app on your much larger screen to cull. (There's been a couple of mentions of this already, but mostly buried in other points.)

However, you are still probably looking at JPEG preview images, so it's still not the most accurate viewing (Steve mentioned this), so I just use it to cull obvious focus misses and otherwise bad frames, plus dupes. THEN I import to LR for more critical culling. But all culling is saved for back home.

Chris
 
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Steve said:
I just met with my friend here in Costa Rica and suer enough, he was the one who showed Hudson the trick. I gave him a hard time about it :) and he did say that it does cause him to lose the occasional shot but that he has so many it doesn't really bother him. In addition, he also agrees that it's not ideal for a typical shooter and that it's better for someone who is only taking selective shots and not really knocking out thousands at once. Just FYI...
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And, he lives in Costa Rico, so he does not risk losing something from a ‘bucket list’ experience! 🤣 This is a great discussion, though, and opens up a lot of possibilities for culling and sorting. For me, the first option is to be very careful with the frame rate I choose.
 
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Lots of great comments here, both pro and con and I do not have much to add to this discussion, except that "FastRawViewer" gives a much faster and accurate representation of your RAW images as it does not use the embedded jpeg. As well it gives valuable data on your exposure, especially highlight and shadows. I like Mike's comment about Dennis who lives in Costa Rica and gave Hudson the 'in camera' culling tip. For Dennis, all he sees around him is like me going out into my backyard, so I am sure that his portfolio is overflowing with wonderful photos of wildlife and fauna. Same with Hudson, as much as I respect him, he frequently visits Costa Rica and other photography meccas multiple times. But for many of us, these trips would be a 'once in a lifetime' trip, so I wouldn't want to throw away a hidden gem that I can never get back. Full disclosure, I mainly shoot landscapes and still life and take lots of time to compose etc and shoot variants which is far different than the majority of you here who shoot wildlife at 10 to 20 fps and have seconds to capture a BIF. But when I do shoot at 20 fps, yes there is a lot to take home to cull, but that is the price I pay for the privilege of being able to have a Z9 and long lenses when I feel like going out of my own comfort zone. With all due respect to Hudson, I give my 'straw vote' to Steve on this one.
 
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Excellent topic and discussion - thanks for all the input. Much to think about here. Timely for me because leaving for southern Africa soon and I cringe when thinking about the number of images I'll end up with after two weeks of shooting the Z9. The culling process is so tedious (at least the way I've been doing it previously).

Btw, I've been told more than once not to delete images in-camera for fear of spoiling the card. Is that still a thing today? It would be nice to at least delete the obviously bad shots when there's some down time in the field.
 
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I agree with Steve and have learned my own hard lesson of missed shots while reviewing images in the field.

After seeing Mark Smith's YouTube video on "

Cull Images Fast, Effective and Efficiently So You Can Get Outside to Take More!"​

I got a copy of FastRawViewer and found it to be a game changer. It solved the problem of slow imports to Lightroom.
 
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When we shot film did we sit and edit in the field? Nope and I apply the same principals.
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Simple rule when I’m shooting I’m shooting and when I’m editing I’m editing.
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There's something to be said for that…but there's something to be said for upgrading techniques and procedures when you have more capability than you used to have. As I said…deleting in the field is a no go for me…but rating so I know what images to focus on in LR initially has some benefits…but it depends on time in the field between opportunities and breaks in the action or driving between locations or whatever. And doing the initial ratings in body in the evenings I still consider to be rating in the field vice doing it back at home…particularly if you've got a whole lot of shots to review…that way you can import all into LR and focus on the shots you think were best first but have the others available if needed. On a multi day trip…the ability to have initial sort done before you sit down in LR certainly has some utility…but it's not one of those things you would do in lieu of shooting more images but something for the downtime.

And as sort of an adjunct to this whole process…and I'll try both to make sure but figured opinions were good. Assuming I'm not interested in moving to PhotoMechanic for my main image management and editing tool…is there any real advantage to using it over FastRawViewer for quick sorting and rating before import into LR? The price of the latter is a lot less and I'm sticking with LR for my main PP but doing an initial sort/rating either in the field, at night in the field, or on the computer upon return to cull and assign a rating to the "I think they're keepers" shots before importing all and then sorting by rating to look at those shots in detail is worthy of consideration in my workflow.
 
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Anjin San said:
There's something to be said for that…but there's something to be said for upgrading techniques and procedures when you have more capability than you used to have. As I said…deleting in the field is a no go for me…but rating so I know what images to focus on in LR initially has some benefits…but it depends on time in the field between opportunities and breaks in the action or driving between locations or whatever. And doing the initial ratings in body in the evenings I still consider to be rating in the field vice doing it back at home…particularly if you've got a whole lot of shots to review…that way you can import all into LR and focus on the shots you think were best first but have the others available if needed. On a multi day trip…the ability to have initial sort done before you sit down in LR certainly has some utility…but it's not one of those things you would do in lieu of shooting more images but something for the downtime.

And as sort of an adjunct to this whole process…and I'll try both to make sure but figured opinions were good. Assuming I'm not interested in moving to PhotoMechanic for my main image management and editing tool…is there any real advantage to using it over FastRawViewer for quick sorting and rating before import into LR? The price of the latter is a lot less and I'm sticking with LR for my main PP but doing an initial sort/rating either in the field, at night in the field, or on the computer upon return to cull and assign a rating to the "I think they're keepers" shots before importing all and then sorting by rating to look at those shots in detail is worthy of consideration in my workflow.
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Photomechanic is not an editor. It’s software that allows you to sort, rate and add metadata to your files. It’s wildly used in the sports photography industry. An example you can upload a roster for both teams on the field and than quick tag and add captions to images you are sending to the wire. You are viewing the jpeg file that is attached to the raw. It allows some basic crop etc of a jpeg file for transmission.

Fast raw viewer which I also have works the same way. I like photomechanic better however fast raw viewer is actually a little faster but I don’t like the size it allows me to see vs photomechanic. Personal preference for sure.

So how I use it is I open the card or folder and ingest the files into photomechanic. I’m able to see and begin rating images very quickly. There is little to no lag in loaded if the images unlike Lightroom. I am looking for sharpness, peak action, unique pose, background etc. those that I like I give one star. I than select just the one star and drag and drop to the import in Lightroom and I’m done. Super fast and easy.

Yesterday I went through 14k images from a shoot a couple months ago. With photomechanic this took me around 3 hours to sort. Shooting 20 fps does add extra images to sort however it always amazes me that one will be a little better based on say wing position, background, light, wind moving things around. Having choices is a wonderful thing but when you have a burst of perfectly sharp images it takes more of an effort to select the perfect one. I don’t think I’d see or want to try and spend the time to see the subtle differences in the field and on a small camera display.
 
I find it easy to confuse, because both fast raw viewer and fastone image editor both start with 'fast,' but they are two different programs. And of course the grandparent of them all, and maybe the best, Bridge, is free to all.

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bleirer said:
I believe the Fastone Image Viewer also converts raw, and is free. And of course Adobe bridge does, and it is also free, and a great image browser.

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I use both programs and have used FSIV for years, primarily because it allows me to view/compare up to 4 images at a time, and it has a great cropping feature when I need to quickly crop a jpeg I have exported from LR Classic. Regarding rendering, I believe that FSIV primarily uses the embedded jpeg file (like PM), but does have a setting to display the raw file. But, since I use both, I used FSIV for quick culling and then open any image in FRV when I need to do a critical examination. I have FRV set up as an external editor to FSIV and can open an image with the press of one key. After all culling is completed, I rename and then import to LR Classic.

Having said all of that, I was involved in a discussion about what program to use for culling on another forum, and the issue of the embedded jpeg's limitations came up. I did not disagree, but what somebody did recommend was that you should cull based on reading the raw file in the program where you were going to do the post processing (in my case LR Classic) as there are different raw converters that programs use and it was best to preview with the same software (and converter) that you planned on using for processing. I am not sure if this is splitting hairs or not, but it was an interesting thought.

--Ken
 
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Replytoken said:
I use both programs and have used FSIV for years, primarily because it allows me to view/compare up to 4 images at a time, and it has a great cropping feature when I need to quickly crop a jpeg I have exported from LR Classic. Regarding rendering, I believe that FSIV primarily uses the embedded jpeg file (like PM), but does have a setting to display the raw file. But, since I use both, I used FSIV for quick culling and then open any image in FRV when I need to do a critical examination. I have FRV set up as an external editor to FSIV and can open an image with the press of one key. After all culling is completed, I rename and then import to LR Classic.

Having said all of that, I was involved in a discussion about what program to use for culling on another forum, and the issue of the embedded jpeg's limitations came up. I did not disagree, but what somebody did recommend was that you should cull based on reading the raw file in the program where you were going to do the post processing (in my case LR Classic) as there are different raw converters that programs use and it was best to preview with the same software (and converter) that you planned on using for processing. I am not sure if this is splitting hairs or not, but it was an interesting thought.

--Ken
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What’s the limitations?
 
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DavidT said:
What’s the limitations?
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For me, the biggest limitations to culling based on embedded JPGs are:
  • The images have already been baked with the camera's JPEG engine, which could include pushing color channels that you wouldn't have pushed quite so much in RAW postprocessing, adding sharpness that makes the image focused better than it was, contrast and color saturation differences that make it look good enough that you don't take another safety shot,, etc. The fix for this, if you must use the embedded JPGs to cull, is to set your camera's JPEG engine to be as neutral as possible. Some cameras have a "FLAT" preset right along side of "STANDARD" and "VIVID", for instance
  • You can't really judge sharpness with a reduced-size image, even if you zoom in, because details are already lost. If you must verify sharpness in the field (such as zooming in on the bird's eye), shoot RAW plus high-quality JPG and review that high-end JPG (this assumes that your camera is still not showing you an embedded preview JPG, so you should test it with your camera). Of course, this exacerbates the "too many files to deal with" issue a bit, but the good thing is that if you don't are about the JPGs beyond this purpose, you can nuke them all later without the need to review them.
Chris
 
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Not A Speck Of Cereal said:
For me, the biggest limitations to culling based on embedded JPGs are:
  • The images have already been baked with the camera's JPEG engine, which could include pushing color channels that you wouldn't have pushed quite so much in RAW postprocessing, adding sharpness that makes the image focused better than it was, contrast and color saturation differences that make it look good enough that you don't take another safety shot,, etc. The fix for this, if you must use the embedded JPGs to cull, is to set your camera's JPEG engine to be as neutral as possible. Some cameras have a "FLAT" preset right along side of "STANDARD" and "VIVID", for instance
  • You can't really judge sharpness with a reduced-size image, even if you zoom in, because details are already lost. If you must verify sharpness in the field (such as zooming in on the bird's eye), shoot RAW plus high-quality JPG and review that high-end JPG (this assumes that your camera is still not showing you an embedded preview JPG, so you should test it with your camera). Of course, this exacerbates the "too many files to deal with" issue a bit, but the good thing is that if you don't are about the JPGs beyond this purpose, you can nuke them all later without the need to review them.
Chris
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Interesting. I haven’t noticed this especially not with Sony. When I was shooting DSLR there were a lot more missed focus but for me it was either in or out. If it was a grey area it would go to the cutting floor. I’m not sure in those instances viewing a raw would have made any difference.

In the mirrorless world I live today it’s more rare an image isn’t sharp than in the DSLR days when it was much more often.

As for color that’s never something I’m considering when sorting images. I’m looking at sharpness, competition, peak action, background, something unique when compared to the other images in the series.

Once I’m in Lightroom I’ll begin working the raw file but if the raw file doesn’t contain the above attributes it will not be saved.

I also tend to get the exposure correct on camera so I don’t have concern over color etc as I have a very capable sensor with a raw output I know will get the results I want or I wouldn’t have taken the shot to begin with.
 
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DavidT said:
Interesting. I haven’t noticed this especially not with Sony. When I was shooting DSLR there were a lot more missed focus but for me it was either in or out. If it was a grey area it would go to the cutting floor. I’m not sure in those instances viewing a raw would have made any difference.

In the mirrorless world I live today it’s more rare an image isn’t sharp than in the DSLR days when it was much more often.
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When it comes to culling based on embedded JPGs, there's no difference between DSLR and mirrorless.
 
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Not A Speck Of Cereal said:
When it comes to culling based on embedded JPGs, there's no difference between DSLR and mirrorless.
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I’m sure that’s the truth. But with the reasons for not culling with a jpeg and using the raw don’t seem to be valid for what I’m doing. I guess my expectation of sharp for example is higher than others. Idk
 
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Thanks DavidT…PM from my brief look today appears to have more features overall but since all I'm looking for is a faster culling app before using LR I think I'll go with FastRawViewer and save the extra cost. I did aim both of them at a folder with 600 or so RAW images in it and FRV appeared to be very slightly faster but both were much faster than LR…which even if you've created all of the previews (and. that takes awhile for 1:1s even on fast hardware) there's still a bit of delay between each frame.
 
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Also, when reviewing these fast image browsing tools, note that some of them might be tweakable for speed in settings. If it has a "read ahead" feature, that could be beneficial (it reads the next file from disk so it's already in memory when you change to it). And some features might slow the app down, such as any that want to read ALL of the images ahead of time (to build an index of some sort).

For example, I've found Faststone to be slow when launched in a window with several hundred images, but have yet to find a way to speed that up.

Chris
 
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Anjin San said:
Thanks DavidT…PM from my brief look today appears to have more features overall but since all I'm looking for is a faster culling app before using LR I think I'll go with FastRawViewer and save the extra cost. I did aim both of them at a folder with 600 or so RAW images in it and FRV appeared to be very slightly faster but both were much faster than LR…which even if you've created all of the previews (and. that takes awhile for 1:1s even on fast hardware) there's still a bit of delay between each frame.
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Yup I agree with you. I have both programs and didn’t find out about fast raw viewer until last year. I think it’s slightly faster as well. Both will serve you well!
 
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Anjin San said:
Thanks DavidT…PM from my brief look today appears to have more features overall but since all I'm looking for is a faster culling app before using LR I think I'll go with FastRawViewer and save the extra cost. I did aim both of them at a folder with 600 or so RAW images in it and FRV appeared to be very slightly faster but both were much faster than LR…which even if you've created all of the previews (and. that takes awhile for 1:1s even on fast hardware) there's still a bit of delay between each frame.
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PM comes in two versions. The regular version is just a viewer with tagging, IPTC, metadata and renaming capabilities among other non-image-processing capabilities. The Plus version has data management and cataloging features.

I'm sure with all these high frame rate cameras, business is booming.
 
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