Success ratio

[Chip NoVaMac]

Just wondering when others go out for a "big day's: shoot - like something like my Rolling Thunder day out - what percentage of pictures do you count as "keepers"? Not that others may agree with all of your choices, for many many very personal.

As an example on Rolling Thunder 2006 I came up with about 10% that were worth "keeping". For ViVa Vienna, I had 20% of my shots that I thought were "keepers" for one reason or another.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

I voted 1-5%.

I'll take ten shots of a certain pose or etc, and only pick one as a "keeper."

Sometimes I'll scrap a whole concept if I don't like how it turned out. I'm fairly picky on which shots I'll let get past Bridge.

 

[Abstract]

Bridge? A photo is lucky to get past the initial stage. I delete 25% of photos straight from the camera, and after I put them onto my computer, I'll cull some from my PowerBook as well.

Using iPhoto Buddy, I have 2 separate photo libraries. Actually, 3 libraries, but lets say 2 are relevent here. The library I have on my 40 GB harddrive on my 12" PB (yeah, only 40GB) contains only the shots I really like, and only the photos from 2005 and 2006. The other library is stored on my external HD, and contains all the photos I took off my camera (every photo from 2001-2006), both the "keepers" and the ones I decide aren't good enough to store on my laptop. I keep the "average" photos just in case of.......erm.......not sure. However, you can't get shots back once they're deleted, so I keep some of the bad ones.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

Yeah, I import everything and open in Bridge. Then I go in and rate the ones I like. I only do no stars or five stars.

About to use a 100 gig portable external just to hold photos. The shots I like, I usually open in Photoshop and save as psd's in a seperate folder, and work from there.

And yeah, unless I delete it in-camera, I have a hard time actually deleting a photo once it's in my computer. You never know, I guess...

 

[Abstract]

^^Yeah, I don't mind deleting photos using the camera, but for some reason, I have a much harder time deleting them once they're on my computer, which is the reason I only delete the bad ones, and keep the average-to-good photos on my external HD.

Deleting a photo once it's on my harddrive is like killing off one of my babies, so I keep it, even if it's an ugly baby.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

^^Yeah, I don't mind deleting photos using the camera, but for some reason, I have a much harder time deleting them once they're on my computer, which is the reason I only delete the bad ones, and keep the average-to-good photos on my external HD.

Deleting a photo once it's on my harddrive is like killing off one of my babies, so I keep it, even if it's an ugly baby.

I have a photo of my wall with a bag hanging on it. Nothing special to it. Quite boring, actually. If I took it now, I'd delete it in-camera. But it was one of the first shots I took with my Pentax P&S and the first one that made it into the computer. Now iphoto would seem weird if I deleted it... since it's the photo I'm used to seeing once I go past the newest photos imported into that app.

 

[cookie1105]

Maybe 10% off my photos make it past photoreviewer into lightroom. But there are even less that I would make public ~ 1.5%. Hopefully these numbers will increase as my skill level increases.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Not sure, and since I got a digital camera I don't really care. As long as there's the occasional "keeper" I'm happy to discard just how many pics I have to...

Now, when I used film (35mm/APS) I was more thorough and probably had a "success ratio" at about 80%** out of sheer economic necessity...

**if you mean images I'm happy enough with... if we're talking "Wow!"-type-images then it was probably under 1%...

 

[Applespider]

Depends on the shots that I'm trying to take. In terms of snapshots of friends/family/holidays, there's a much higher % of those that I'll keep than if I'm attempting more 'arty' shots. I probably keep about 70% of snapshots... and about 5-10% of the others.

 

[Abstract]

Now, when I used film (35mm/APS) I was more thorough and probably had a "success ratio" at about 80%** out of sheer economic necessity...

Yeah, having film affected my shooting a lot. You couldn't go nuts and shoot crap and get away with it. Film cost money, and so did processing, so unless you were rich, you'd never get away with shooting like you do with digital (ie: "recklessly").

But with film, I had a much higher success rate, where I would have been more than happy to keep the photo, even if it wasn't perfect. However, I never went for arty shots because it was always riskier and a potential waste of money, and I didn't have any money.

I got my first point and shoot film camera around 7-8 years ago (it cost around $80 CDN and was crap......didn't even have zoom), and I didn't have enough money for 2 rolls of film + processing, so I always played it safe.

 

[Over Achiever]

Out with friends and family I'd say I delete 1 of every two or three (50-67% success rate), but I do keep a majority of the images. As for photos I really like, that is much rarer, I'd say I'd only have about 5-10 images I really love out of a full day's shoot of around 100 images ... so yeah 5-10% success rate for me.

 

[Clix Pix]

Much depends on why I'm shooting in the first place and what I intend to do with the images afterward. If I'm shooting to address a specific assignment or competition topic, I am going to discard most of the images once I've found "the one." If I'm just shooting casually for myself, I may keep several and stick them in an online gallery. For instance, yesterday I spent the better part of an hour shooting an image to fulfill my online women's photo group's assignment of "Remember When...." Started out with one idea, shot a few images and didn't like what I was seeing, so tried something different, approaching the subject from a different angle and perspective. I knew when I'd shot the "keeper," and so right then took the CF card out of the camera and uploaded the 40-some images into the computer and out of those images, post-processed only two, the one for the assignment and another which was a pretty nice macro. The rest will be deleted.

Another example is the image I showed in the "Photo of the Day" thread. Again I started out with one idea and wound up shooting something very different. In that situation, I had about 4 "keepers," one of which I used to fulfill the word "spring" and another (the one you saw here) I placed in our "Best of the Best" gallery for May.

I NEVER delete images in the camera, even when I can see that they're not so good. Sometimes when you get them in the computer you can find ways to do something creative and interesting with them, perhaps by extreme cropping or inversion of colors, etc. I look at them all in the computer in Aperture, then usually delete at that point, keeping ones which I know I'll be processing and ones I think I might want to experiment with.

 

[iGary]

Depends on what I am taking pictures of but generally 5%.

I was thinking about this the other day - how things have changed since film.

 

[ziwi]

Depends on the shots that I'm trying to take. In terms of snapshots of friends/family/holidays, there's a much higher % of those that I'll keep than if I'm attempting more 'arty' shots. I probably keep about 70% of snapshots... and about 5-10% of the others.

I agree here - it is based on the subject.

 

[jared_kipe]

I voted 1-5%.

I'll take ten shots of a certain pose or etc, and only pick one as a "keeper."

You realize of course that if you shoot 10 keep one then thats 10%

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

You realize of course that if you shoot 10 keep one then thats 10%

Yep.

And then if I discard a whole collection of photos of another concept, say another 10-20 shots... 1 shot in 20-30 is 3-5% or so.

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

Depends on what I am taking pictures of but generally 5%.

Some us have problems letting go I think.

My thought is to Have an "Editing Club". We would post lets say our five best shots, and a link to a gallery of our "near misses" and see what hidden treasures we might find in these other images. Sort of like putting up our contact sheets for comment.

This idea comes from a photo class that I took. Some saw images that I missed, maybe the shot required cropping or some dodging and burning. Whatever. It was through that effort in class I ended up winning second place in the NVCC-WB Art Fair competition. And had that image and a runner-up selected for inclusion in their photographic collection.

An example of a web page that could be visited and used by the "editors" is like this page: http://homepage.mac.com/jlenkiewicz/PhotoAlbum19.html

And as a further example, attached are the five that I think are best from my Rolling Thunder shoot.

As in my photo class, there will be times that we as the photographer will feel strongly about an image. But many time we might miss an otherwise "winning" image.

I was thinking about this the other day - how things have changed since film.

Final count for my Rolling Thunder shoot was 242 images. Almost 7 rolls of 36 exposure film. In a total span of 6 hours (including travel time). There are shots that I was able to re-shoot because of being able to "chimp" my results. Some shots are better exposed after re-shooting because of my being able to "chimp". I was also able to try different techniques because of not having to think of film and processing costs.

The result for me at least is a greater number of "keepers". And the chance of being more daring in how I approach a subject.