Inherited a relative's gear and Lightroom catalogues - where do I start?

[cjsuk]

Hi all. I just inherited a relative's rather large photography collection and I need to carefully process it and work out what to do with it all. I'm fairly experienced wrangling Macs and photography stuff but this is an exceptionally large task. I extracted all the account info first of all, cancelled subscriptions and managed to hand over any bills and stuff to the surviving relative. The stuff contains a couple of recent macs, a couple of mirrorless nikon bodies, quite a few lenses and a huge pile of accessories. I can deal with most of that and will probably keep some of it myself. BUT it contains approximately 24TB of storage in total (!) with god knows what on it across about 6 drives. These were all hanging off an iMac via a TB hub. I ran through each drive and wrote down what was roughly on it and there are a bunch of Lightroom classic catalogues and a chunk of video. One was a TM backup of the machine itself and there was at least one archive/mirror disk from what I can see.

For the sake of the surviving relatives I need to consolidate all that into something sensible and reduce and process it all and stick it somewhere, probably iCloud photos.

Does anyone have any ideas where to start? I am at a complete loss at the moment.

 

[deep diver]

First, our condolences for your loss.

This would be a daunting task for anyone. I think I would start by asking the relatives what kinds of images they would want. I would then cull out anything that doesn't match that or what you want. Then I would cull out images that are redundant or not of good enough quality. Hopefully, that will bring the number of files down to a more manageable size. I also think it will help if you decide how much processing you really need to do and if you need to organize the photos into albums, or if it's enough to upload them as they are.

 

[_timo_redux_]

I don't know Lightroom, but my guess is first things, I'd look to see if there's isn't something already culled. Maybe the LR catalogs had ratings, in which case you could start there. Of course if there's keywords with relatives names, start there. Or maybe a smaller catalog was favorites.

If not, and it was just a dumping ground, that's a bigger challenge. 24TB (or whatever) of RAW files is a lot to go through and evaluate. You either throw up your hands and carefully archive it (consolidate the pictures, copy to a couple of hard drives) for someone who wants to do this work in the future (another relative, perhaps someone younger now who might care more later) or maybe you pace yourself going through the work, over time, if you think there's something there.

I think you have to give yourself permission to look but also discard without second thoughts. If you even pulled 10 great or interesting or relevant images from this pile, that would be a win for all concerned. In my mind, any work you do to extract something meaningful -- and therefore help honor your relative's life -- is valuable. Best of luck to you with your task.

 

[berb]

If you don't currently use Lightroom Classic you can still access most of the catalog features using a free Adobe account. Lightroom Classic never fully expires. You only lose the ability to use Maps and Develop (Quick Develop still works). You or the relatives can still search, export, etc, as long as they can have the know-how to use Lightroom Classic.

If you want to move images, videos and metadata to Apple Photos, Avalanche by CYME can automate that.

For photo gear I've always received excellent support from KEH.

Good luck with the process.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

It seems very likely that there is at least one complete set of back-ups and more likely two. I would start by trying to sort that out. Figuring that out would be where I would start. The creation date and time, in the meta data is the key to tracking dupes/trips... If one of the sets appears to have been reduced down to 'keeper' images that would be your best working set.

If this is a project you want to tackle give yourself time. Allot an hour or two a day, maybe 2 or 3 days a week. At first it will really feel like a grind but at some point it will all come together. You'll know fairly quickly whether or not it's going to be mostly culls or if the gems will overwhelm you. Either way try to have some fun with it.

 

[cjsuk]

Thanks all for the thoughtful feedback - much appreciated!

I'm writing up notes and working from this for ideas and will post back when I get somewhere with it.

Again thank you all!

 

[OldMacs4Me]

Hopefully you will find a few shots that bring back some pleasant memories. A wonderful bonus from this sort of project

 

[Fishrrman]

Lots and lots of culling to do.

If there are both jpegs and RAWs, I'd copy the jpegs I wanted to save to another drive, and delete all the RAW files.

 

[_timo_redux_]

Lots and lots of culling to do.

If there are both jpegs and RAWs, I'd copy the jpegs I wanted to save to another drive, and delete all the RAW files.

Interesting; I'd do the opposite. I'd want to keep the "negatives" ... assuming first they're of a quality worth keeping.

 

[cjsuk]

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I'm not storing a few TB of RAWs going ahead so I will probably be doing a filter job and deleting collections which are of no interest or no relevance to the family, then filtering those, then export everything left to JPEG or optimised video.

I'll be hung for this but I don't actually even shoot RAW on my own mirrorless.

 

[Fishrrman]

OP wrote:
"I'll be hung for this but I don't actually even shoot RAW on my own mirrorless."

Not by me.
I shoot EVERYTHING in jpeg and leave it at that.

I tried RAW a couple of times -- too much trouble, and I saw little to no difference in the final product with my old eyes.

 

[Ben J.]

I say; take your time to get an overview of everything. And get more familiar with LR if you're not already. LR has two main main ways to view catalogue contents, both in the leftmost column in the main window; Volume/drive view, and collections. The first simply shows the hierarchy of the files and folders on the drives. You can also move/delete/organize here just like in Finder. Then there is Collections. Collections can be created to organize files without moving the files themselves, collections contain 'pointers' to the files.

I'm not getting any younger myself (who is?), so I'm in the process of creating collections from my library and then exporting full resolution jpegs of all raw+ files from those collections, to reduce file sizes and eventually store them in the cloud somehow.

There is a chance that your relative have already done some or much organizing already in collections, so be sure to check that. You might be able to open collections, select all images, and export to jpegs, and not have to wade thru the actual folders on the drives.

 

[Ben J.]

I tried RAW a couple of times -- too much trouble, and I saw little to no difference in the final product with my old eyes.

I honestly do not want to derail this thread, but I can't let this go uncommented. If you want to see an example of RAW vs 'demosaiced', try this:
Using manual exposure, take a photo with an aperture 4 or 5 times smaller than the camera says is optimal. You'll get an almost black result. Then in a RAW editor, increase the brightness by 4 or 5 steps aperture equivilent, and you will retrieve much of the detail, plus some noise. Try doing that with a jpeg or tiff…
But seriously, if you want to talk more about this, let's do another thread.

 

[cjsuk]

I honestly do not want to derail this thread, but I can't let this go uncommented. If you want to see an example of RAW vs 'demosaiced', try this:
Using manual exposure, take a photo with an aperture 4 or 5 times smaller than the camera says is optimal. You'll get an almost black result. Then in a RAW editor, increase the brightness by 4 or 5 steps aperture equivilent, and you will retrieve much of the detail, plus some noise. Try doing that with a jpeg or tiff…
But seriously, if you want to talk more about this, let's do another thread.

Yeah well aware of that. I did shoot raw for a long time myself and used Lightroom. But the better I got at using the camera the less "get outs" I needed so at best I will do a single crop or minor adjustment and job done. I shot on film for many years before so switched back to editing before pressing the shutter 😅

Also I hate giving Adobe money 🤣

 

[cjsuk]

I say; take your time to get an overview of everything. And get more familiar with LR if you're not already. LR has two main main ways to view catalogue contents, both in the leftmost column in the main window; Volume/drive view, and collections. The first simply shows the hierarchy of the files and folders on the drives. You can also move/delete/organize here just like in Finder. Then there is Collections. Collections can be created to organize files without moving the files themselves, collections contain 'pointers' to the files.

I'm not getting any younger myself (who is?), so I'm in the process of creating collections from my library and then exporting full resolution jpegs of all raw+ files from those collections, to reduce file sizes and eventually store them in the cloud somehow.

There is a chance that your relative have already done some or much organizing already in collections, so be sure to check that. You might be able to open collections, select all images, and export to jpegs, and not have to wade thru the actual folders on the drives.

I signed up for Lightroom again today. Figure it's what £10/month. I hate giving them money but I've got to start with the right tools for the job.

The collections seem to be well organised indeed.

I spent some time on it this afternoon and have worked out what I have is several Lightroom backups of the same catalogue to contend with. The catalogue/cache and database is actually on the mac itself and the images are on external volumes and there are multiple backups of the entire thing.

I've sized the catalogue to around 3TB so have ordered a new 4TB SSD to act as a consolidation target for everything for now (I don't want it mixed up with my stuff). Plan is to get the current state of everything on to this external disk, start cutting it down, then move his files and other stuff on there. I will check the SMART status of all the other external disks and make sure there's a healthy one and rsync everything onto that drive as a secondary backup should the SSD fail.

 

[mollyc]

If it's pretty well organized, I'd just do a major export folder by folder (or collections, etc) and get them all in jpegs. While in general I prefer raws, since these are inherited images, you are unlikely to want to reprocess them from the original photographer. Export to the largest jpg possible then move to whatever share/backup site you need to.

 

[deep diver]

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I'm not storing a few TB of RAWs going ahead so I will probably be doing a filter job and deleting collections which are of no interest or no relevance to the family, then filtering those, then export everything left to JPEG or optimised video.

I'll be hung for this but I don't actually even shoot RAW on my own mirrorless.

I'm jpeg almost exclusively. You have plenty of company on this one.

 

[cjsuk]

So I spent a couple of hours on this yesterday with the intent of pulling some contextual stuff for his funeral. There are very few collections set up in the catalogue so it's a dredging job for sure. The structure is roughly one year folder since 1997 until today and then days in it (default Lightroom import format) and some of the folders have been suffixed with something useful after an import. There is a huge amount of garbage in it so it should be fairly easy to chunk through over time leaving what I hope is a both concise and comprehensive collection. Under 20Gb is feasible looking at the hit/miss ratio and JPEG export. There are some very interesting folders with memories in so it'll be emotionally hard. I also found several boxes of negatives and prints so I will be scanning and archiving those over time as well.

I've picked a random photo to post here. This is lake Lucerne in Switzerland, a place I know well from family holidays going back 30 years. I was planning to return here myself next year 🙂

 

[Jumpthesnark]

Someone mentioned culling the images. There is no reason to actually throw out RAW images, period, unless you are going to eventually erase the drives and reuse them. Deleting images from LR can do more harm than good to the catalogs, and LR has an abundance of tools (ratings, stars, etc) that allow you to only see the images that you have marked. Use those tools. What if you throw out images that you think are unimportant, but in a few months a family member says "Wow those photos were great. You know, there's a photo he took I've been thinking of and I'd really like to make a print of it. It was me in my first car..." or something like that. I'd hate to be the one who says "yeah, I threw it out."

If your goal is to eventually share images with family, you won't be deleting photos and then handing these drives to them, you should be exporting new jpegs so they can be uploaded to the cloud, where everyone can access them.

That's what LR is for. You select the images you want, work them in a nondestructive manner and then export brand new copies. Maybe sort them into folders by year, or event (vacation, wedding, new baby, etc.) and people, so it's easier for the rest of the family to find the images they want to see.

Break up this huge job into smaller jobs. Just do one catalog at a time. Use your finder tools to tag each catalog as complete once you've made your exports from it, just pick a color and you'll know at a glance whether you're done.

Good luck with this. It sounds like a huge job. Your post just made me consider the load of hard drives that I'll one day leave for my family. I hope they they take the care that you are taking, and I hope I don't leave them a mess!

 

[cjsuk]

Ok after reading through this and doing the relevant trade-offs here and there I've decided not to export all the RAWs to JPEG and then delete the RAWs. Thanks for everyone's inputs - they are very valuable and I appreciate the time people have taken to write up responses.

The plan for dealing with this will be ... (drum roll):

1. Provision this new SSD with an APFS volume and move the Lightroom catalogue onto a known good disk. This is arriving today so I will start doing that later.
2. Consolidate all SD/CF cards floating around into the catalogue (just did that this morning!)
3. Comb through the catalogue and delete any photos which are crap or irrelevant (out of focus, failed experiments, sensor dirt checks, whole subjects which are of no interest [the neighbourhood kids loitering etc etc] )
4. Comb through the catalogue and delete duplicates or machine-gunned series.
5. Create a "summary" collection of a selection of photos which are family relevant and export to (my) iCloud Photos to share with family members.
6. Periodically revisit the LR catalogue when I see fit to and do more of (5)

I just dredged all the SD and CF cards into the catalogue and erased them as well.

I inventoried all the main gear as well now and there is a Nikon Z6-II, 24-70mm f/4 S lens, 24-200 f4-6.3 VR, 40mm f/2 and a Sony a6000 APS-C. Plus a load of Apple gear (ARM iMac + MBP). I will go through and check all that over carefully. I may keep the Nikon kit yet. I currently have a Z50 so it's in the same area of interest and the glass and full frame is a hell of a step up from the DX format cameras. The Apple kit will be disposed of.

 

[OldMacs4Me]

I may keep the Nikon kit yet. I currently have a Z50 so it's in the same area of interest and the glass and full frame is a hell of a step up from the DX format cameras. The Apple kit will be disposed of.

I actually had quite a debate with myself before choosing the Z50 over the Z6. The Z6 set-up would have been heavier, more expensive and therefore more likely to stay at home. Additionally with the Z50 I can go a little tighter than full frame when copying 35mm and still have enough headroom for the auto focus to work. NOTE: Had my main interest been strobe based portrait or product photography, or were I making my living with my camera, I would probably have gone the other way.

The Z6 has a marginally higher pixel count but you will need to set them both on a tripod and shoot the same subject to see if the Z6 is showing better detail capture at maximum resolution.

My own observations: 1" sensor is a fairly big improvement over the tiny sensor in my Olympus waterproof. Going from the 1" Lumix to the Z50 the most noticeable improvement was performance at or above ISO 1600. At lower ISOs, detail captures were marginally better with Z50 but the difference was not really noticeable except at full resolution.

Have not really worked with the Z6 but again would expect at best a modest improvement at ISOs over 3200. At lower ISOs perhaps slightly better detail capture when viewed at full resolution.

Anyways tripod mounted side by side comparisons with all anti-shake features disabled should give you a very good idea as to what the real world differences are. The nice thing is that the 2 cameras are so similar that there will be no learning curve with the Z6 and it would be effortless to switch between should you choose to keep both.

Keep us posted.

BTW You are welcome to post any of those photos that really catch your eye in the 'Relaxed Photos' thread.

 

[Fishrrman]

If you have inherited that Nikon hardware, I'd recommend that you most certainly keep it if you're already "a Nikon person"...

 

[cjsuk]

If you have inherited that Nikon hardware, I'd recommend that you most certainly keep it if you're already "a Nikon person"...

Maybe. I'll see how I get on. I don't really want to lug around a full frame as I do a lot of travel and the Z50 is pretty tiny and very light, especially with the kit 16-50 lens strapped on it. Case in point my entire Z50 travel kit weighs less than the Z6-ii body does. Also hurts me less if it gets stolen.

 

[mollyc]

Maybe. I'll see how I get on. I don't really want to lug around a full frame as I do a lot of travel and the Z50 is pretty tiny and very light, especially with the kit 16-50 lens strapped on it. Case in point my entire Z50 travel kit weighs less than the Z6-ii body does. Also hurts me less if it gets stolen.

I would argue that if an inherited camera gets stolen it hurts you less than one you've actually paid for. Since the inherited one is free.

I have both a Z6 and Z6ii and don't find either of them particularly difficult or large to carry.

Also, if you are seriously worried about theft, I'd encourage you to look into gear insurance. It's typically offered as a rider on your existing homeowner's policy. I have most of my own gear insured so I have no concerns using it out in the world (but I never leave it in a car).

 

[cjsuk]

I would argue that if an inherited camera gets stolen it hurts you less than one you've actually paid for. Since the inherited one is free.

I have both a Z6 and Z6ii and don't find either of them particularly difficult or large to carry.

Also, if you are seriously worried about theft, I'd encourage you to look into gear insurance. It's typically offered as a rider on your existing homeowner's policy. I have most of my own gear insured so I have no concerns using it out in the world (but I never leave it in a car).

Quite right with your first comment.

I am probably an outlier. I do multi day and week expeditions in remote locations so every gram counts. Less of an issue for casual holidays and days out but I'm on foot a lot of the time for 2-3 weeks at a time. I'm off to Malta next week so I might take the Z6-ii with me and see how I get on.

As for the insurance, I am already covered so good point there.