Don’t delete that picture!

Memory cards are cheap these days. Well… the super fast ones or super big ones aren’t so cheap, but generally speaking the price of cards has dropped so much that you shouldn’t have much reason to worry about how many pictures you can fit onto a card.

 Still, people like to delete pictures they think they won’t like using their camera. There are a few good reasons why you likely should avoid doing that - not least of which is the time it takes to weed through good and bad pictures.

Here are three reasons you should stick with what you’ve got until you have time to sort through them on your computer.

Don’t kill your batteries

Camera batteries are more robust than ever, but LCD screens on them still suck up a lot of juice using that backlight. The more you review and edit your pictures in camera, the sooner you’ll have an empty battery.

You can’t see the details

Remember, your camera’s LCD screen lies to you. It’s a liar. Screens are getting better… we almost have cameras with a 1 megapixel LCD monitor now, but those are usually expensive, and most of us have cameras with .25 megapixel (roughly) LCD screens. It’s pretty hard to see detail on screens that are that low quality, so you may be deleting a picture that will actually look much better on your computer screen once you download it.

Delete on your computer

It’s too fumbly even when you’re really good with your cameras buttons to scroll through all your pictures and weed out the bad ones. Save the deleting for when you’ve got them on your computer. If you insist on using the LCD screen and your camera to delete, eventually you’ll have trouble identifying a bad ones and you’ll delete a good one. Then you’ll kick yourself. Then you’ll think “Why didn’t I listen to Fotohacker?”

Leave the deleting for when you’re on your computer, and are able to get a better idea of the pictures you want.