[zamnos]

Git simply wasn't designed for that and so the key issue with storing binaries in it is what you mentioned last - that the way git works, a full clone has the full history of all the files. Deleting a file in git then doesn't actually delete the file from git history, so a fresh full clone of 500G of photos isn't going to be 500G, it's going to be that, times however many copies exist in history. A shallow clone solves that, and shallow clones supposedly work better these days in latest version of git, but fundamentally you're using a hammer on screws, as it were.

If you're open to new tools, git annex is what you're looking for. The other two options are Subversion, which has some DVCS features these days, or Perforce Helix Core (paid), though I can't vouch for it as I've never used it.