coolhanduke Loc: Redondo Beach, CA

Never heard of such a thing.
I understand your process suggestion but sounds very laborious. As you say, with 20 frames a second you will be reviewing a crap load of photos.
I too have a Z9. I shoot, download my photos to my MacBook Pro and format the card(s). Image management on the Mac is a different story.

Bultaco Loc: Aiken, SC

pecohen Loc: Central Maine

Yes, but format can be a problem: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-715534-1.html

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

One of the problems with this site, and sometimes with photographers in general is that things once learned are never updated. This may be the single biggest source of both ignorance and conflict among pur number. We are in a field that has been advancing very rapidly for the past 20 or 25 years. Much of what might have been true, or at least a valid concern, 10 or even 5 years ago is no longer true today. When I joined this group five years ago, I was using equipment that was 10 years old (or even a little more). Things applied to my D200 and S3Pro that are nowhere near true of today's equipment.

Deleting in-camera is one of those topics. I have never in my almost 20 years of digital photography ever had a problem that resulted from deleting a photograph using my camera controls. I have on a couple of occasions experienced trouble after manipulating a memory card in my computer, perhaps partially downloading it, then reinserting it in my camera. It seemed that my computer managed the file system in a way that was incompatible with the way the camera managed the file system.

As far as the distraction argument offered here, you will have to work that out on your own. It's not an issue for me, since I refuse to be held hostage by my hobby. I suggest that you experiment in a non-critical situation to see what works and what doesn't. Don't blame it on your camera unless you know that it is a camera problem.

I still use my D300 and D300s every once in a while. Occasionally I'll even pull out My D200. I do not use them the same way I use my D500 or D850. That's part of my responsibility. But I know how they are different and I know what is appropriate do do with each of them. It's part of my responsibility, but it's also part of the fun.

Deleting an image in the camera is not something I ever worry about for any of them.

leftj Loc: Texas

My experience as well. Don't know why these types of myths are propagated.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

1) Buy larger cards.
2) Stop wasting time, mental focus, and battery charge.
3) When card is full, use the write protect switch and put the card in your static-free, dust-proof, waterproof card carrier.
4) Download everything to your computer and to two or three other storage locations.
5) Turn off the card’s write protect switch, insert it into the exact camera you’ll use it in next, and immediately format the card.
6) Cull edit your exposures. Process raw files…

Formatting puts the least significant wear on the memory cells. All it does is to hide the old file directory and create a new one. Your old, now hidden files are overwritten with new data when you use the camera again.

You CAN “delete” files at the camera, without worrying about corruption. It’s 2022… Cards have huge capacities, most are relatively inexpensive (except for exotic types), and they are far more reliable than 20 years ago.

I never go out without four empty 64 GB cards. If my camera made very large files, I’d buy larger capacity cards, and more of them.

47greyfox Loc: on the edge of the Colorado front range

Hey, whatever floats your boat. If you’re standing (or sitting) and zipping thru images and you see a few that you’d like to delete, do it. If you’d rather wait until you’re sitting in front of your laptop or desktop, that’s okay as well. If you feel the need to delete from the camera because the storage media space is running low, you should buy more or larger cards or both.

Rhinophoto Loc: Davis, CA

I do lots of deleting. The gross mistakes in the camera (but not during the action); the obvious inferior images immediately after putting in Lightroom; the lesser quality images after processing; and then years down the road when I get a better image - or have ten images of the same scene.

Mike

raymondh Loc: Walker, MI

Anyone who shoots sports at 7 - 15 frames / sec knows the number of keepers are a small % of the total number captured. Why not use time outs, half times, between innings . . . & cull those unusable images?

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Switch steps 5 and 6. Don't reformat the card until your culling and processing are done.

WesIam Loc: Phoenixville, Pa

I never had a problem deleting in camera.Do it all the time.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

An earlier step is to copy the contents of the card to two backup drives... Presumably one would check those files...

At any rate, I practice a "last out, last used" policy. The last one I used is the fourth one I'll use next.

I keep card recovery software on my computer for the rare event when I might need to recover data. So far, I've used it for six other peoples' cards, but not mine. It works on the images you haven't overwritten, but it can take hours to complete recovery.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

Belt and suspenders approach.

photoman43

I doubt if deleting in camera would corrupt a card. My general practice is not to delete in camera unless I have time on my hands and no battery issues to be concerned about.

I just came across a posting on another photo blog that deals with this topic. With some cameras you can protect images by pressing a certain button. This was news to me and I am going to check it out.

https://bcgforums.com/index.php?threads/culling-in-the-field.16795/page-2#post-186897

This link is a sample workflow for culling in Photo Mechanic before importing into Lightroom:

https://www.moosepeterson.com/blog/workflow-22/

Toby

I have heard this before but never from an expert and I have been deleting individual files from my camera for years and never had a problem. Hope these are not my "famous last words"