Auto Delete of Copied Files

[TTracey]

I'm a new user of a Rebel T3 and was trying to find a way to have the pictures / videos automatically deleted from the card after I've copied them to my computer.  I'm currently using EOS Utility version 2.13.25.1 but can't find a setting to auto delete the photos.

Is there a better way to move the pictures and clear the card at the same time?

Thanks in advance...

[ebiggs1]

Yeah, I don't think EOS Utility will delete anything from your card. And most likely you wouldn't want it to.

But by far the best way to delete photos from the card is to format it. Rather than deleting them.

Make sure you have several cards and forgo the huge cards unless you just shoot video. 

[TTracey]

Thanks - I don't have a problem with reformatting the card occasionally, but I'd like the ability to have the pictures removed automatically once they're safely copied to my PC.

I haven't had the camera long enough to see if there are any issues with simply deleting the files, but will be wary of that.

[TCampbell]

I don't think EOS utility does this.  I use Aperture (on Mac) and it has the option to delete the images after a successful import.  It wont do a delete until the import session is over and the images are all successfully in so that, should something fail half-way through, your images will be left on the card to try again.

Another option (but this is probably a radical departure from your current way of using the camera) is the Eye-Fi card.  The card installs an agent on your computer (PC or Mac), the card joins your WiFi network, and everytime you take a break it starts transferring images.  It wont transfer images if you are using the camera.  After you shoot, it waits a few seconds and if you don't start shooting again, it will wake up, connect to the WiFi network, and start transferring images.  This means there's a bit of a delay before an image shows up on the computer.  This method of sleeping until your camera is idle is intended to save battery power because being on the WiFi non-stop is a drain on the battery.

In any event, the Eye-Fi card has an optional "infinite memory card" mode where you never really delete your images manually.  Instead, the card allows itself to become 50% full.  Once it hits that point, it begins deleting images above that threshold (oldest images first) provided they have successfully sync'd to your computer.

I bought the Eye-Fi thinking I could use it for wireless tethered shooting.  But I found the delay to be a bit annoying... I had to shoot, pause a few seconds, wait for it to wake up and start transferring, and since I shoot RAW each transfer took a while becasue the card is fairly slow, and then check the review on my computer or tablet.  Then I could decide what I wanted to tweak and take the next shot.  But the delay and transfer time was too much for me and I felt like it was just standing around waiting on it too much (even though it does work.)  In the end, when I want to do tethered shooting, I use a cable.

What OS are you running and what do you use to manage your images?

[TTracey]

Hey Tim - thanks for the info.  I'm brand new into digital photography and really not trying to be a proffessional, just trying to get some pictures that are better than my cellphone.  I'm not really manipulating the images (at least not yet) for better quality or effects.  I'm running Windows 7 on a Dell laptop and only have (at least for now) the Canon editing tools installed.

I had thought about the Eye-Fi card but hadn't purchased one yet.  It sounds like it would do what I want, and I'm not overly concerned with the delay in uploading.  I'm not shooting RAW, so it should be a little quicker, but - I was trying to have my PC send them directly to my Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, but found that REALLY slow.  Now I push them to my PC's harddrive and have a background process that replicates them to the NAS.  This keeps them in two places - and makes the transfer extremely fast via cable.

I bought a 64GB high-speed card for the camera and I'm pretty certain I'll never fill it up - even with some short video segments.  That said, if I start getting more into different types of photography - and shooting some longer videos - I may need to start looking at options...

Right now, I'm simply dropping the images into a simple "Daily" directory structure in Windows.  New folder for each day's shots.  I haven't even started pruning out the bad shots yet, but I'll need to do that at some point to manage avaialble disk space (getting a little tight on my laptop).

If you're thinking of getting rid of your Eye-Fi card, let me know - I'm always on the lookout for something cheap! 🙂

[ebiggs1]

For what it's worth, all my "pro" photographer buddies that have tried the Eye-fi Pro have all stopped using it for one reason or another. Slow, unreliable transmission was mentioned a lot. For an amateur it may be OK, just reporting. 

Someone told me you have to use a special reader if you want to read the card itself.