Family Shooter Workflow - now with RAW! (question)

[PaulVI]

Hi, I'm back after a long hiatus from the forum...

After making the leap to DSLR (about 1.5 years ago) , I've now waded into shooting RAW. Playing around with Canon's Digital Photo Professional software, I now see the power of RAW.

I now have some cause(s) of worry:

1. I have an additional step (converting or exporting as jpeg) before posting onto Facebook or other means of sharing or printing with online services. Mostly, I mean, "I'm afraid of my wife's reaction when she finds out." Isn't that one legitimate worry of the (male) photographer? (She's the main print-service user.)

2. File space is becoming scarce. I've moved the photo archives to an external drive, then whittled the collection in the laptop down to the "best of". Still, the future would seem to be written: shooting RAW or RAW+JPEG (especially) would mean that I'd need more space, or even more steps for managing (post-production then deletion of unused RAWs).

I've considered shooting RAW+JPEG, speeding up posting and printing, while having the option to open up the power of RAW. But it also brings up the file-space issue, particularly if I get backed up on "work". And if you're like George Lucas, are you ever really done editing/processing? I've also considered shooting just RAW, to use less file space but requiring more steps for posting and printing.

Any other non-professional, family shooters out there using RAW? How can I speed up workflow? Or is this life as a RAW-shooter? Or is it, "Back to JPEG, Family Shooter"?

[IABoomer]

Drive space is dirt cheap. When you can buy a TB for under $100, worrying about running out of room just isn't a concern.

You can always do quick and dirty exports or batch conversions from RAW to JPEG images if she's wanting to quick-print some snaps. Since I got my D5000, I've shot everything with it in RAW. If my wife wants a bunch of prints made, I'll have her sit down and flag the images she wants printed, I'll touch them up if need be and export them to a thumb drive/upload them to a printing service. I'm sure given a couple cycles at this, she could probably do it herself if she wanted to.

[PaulVI]

Thanks for your suggestion. That's probably what I'll do.