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Archive 2013 · picture perfect yield and what body used

  
 
gdanmitchell
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · picture perfect yield and what body used


Peter Figen wrote:
For the record, when I posted above, I wasn't talking about images that could be made better in post, I was referring to images in general that really stood the test of time and turn into iconic classics in their genre. Even those need a fair amount of post production, particularly when they're shot on film.


The notion - and I'm not saying it was yours, just using your post as one to reply to - that film didn't require work in post makes no sense at all.

Pictures did not "come out of the camera" on film without intervention. That film had to be developed, and how to develop it involved some choices, at least among those who were trying for something more interesting that drug store prints.

Then the film negatives (or possibly positives) had to be printed. This also involves a range of decision about how to create that print, even in cases where those choices could be made semi-automatically by machines designed to make cheap prints. When the prints was made by a skillful photographer/printer, even more decisions and interventions might be applied - burning and dodging, choices of paper type, contrast, color filters, etc.

The closest that one might come to (almost but not really) out of camera final images was when shooting slides. If you knew/know what you were doing, encountered few or no surprises or tricky situations, never tried anything a bit experimental, you might get a high percentage of technically fine exposures, though "picture perfect" images tend to come in (very!) much smaller numbers.

There is a myth about how great photographers "got it right in the camera" that is responsible for an incredible amount or wrong-headed and misleading notions about photography and how it is done.

On one had we have those who point to greats like Cartier-Bresson who apparently didn't care a ton about some of the technical niceties and who did not make his own prints, but who created many stunningly effective images. A couple of "howevers," though, are in order. First, the "effective" images that we are so familiar with were the best from among many others that mostly never saw the light of day. It was most certainly not the case that every shutter click resulted in an effective photograph - quite to the contrary, actually!

There there is the whole "pre-visualization" notion, which has been twisted and mutated into the mistaken belief that Adams (who often gets credit for the term) knew exactly what his print would look like before making the exposure and, by extension, knew which subjects would or would not produce classics. This is wrong on so many counts as to be laughable. Adams, himself, said (among many notable things he said) that he felt that 12 good photographs per year was a very impressive and satisfactory number. Needless to say, he exposed far more than that. Reportedly, as told to me by someone who knew him, one of his proteges was assigned the task of making contact prints for more or less archival purposes of several thousand of Ansel's negatives. This protege reported that what impressed him most about these photographs, most of which never saw the light of day, was how utterly banal and boring they were - he called them "record" shots.

In reality, photography is (almost always) messy business, full of guesses, hunches, missed opportunities, experiments, back-up shots, and more. "Perfection" has little to do with it, though with hard work and inspired vision and consistent dedication, some excellent work can emerge.

So perhaps "picture perfect" means different things to different people. If it means "fine exposure in non-challenging situations," a careful camera operator can perhaps produce a lot of "perfect" exposures. If it means all that a photograph that might impress us as exceptional can be, then it is a very rare and difficult thing.

Dan



Apr 21, 2013 at 07:12 AM
Depp
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · picture perfect yield and what body used


Did our latest shoot with three photographers and about 12,000 images. The client wanted 400+ images for a new website. Every image get's PP'd, sometimes more then half a dozen times. We've got the 400+ for them as of now...am I satisfied, no way...we can still shoot the location, and we will be....

As for truly great pics...the ones that really stands well above the others...those are extremely rare, AFAIC.



Apr 21, 2013 at 07:24 AM
EB-1
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · picture perfect yield and what body used


None. I only shoot RAW and everything needs to be processed. The % of keepers is around 1-3%, depending on subject matter.

EBH



Apr 21, 2013 at 07:51 AM
molson
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · picture perfect yield and what body used


GC5 wrote:
0. I shoot raw and the only things I don't process I trash.



+1



Apr 22, 2013 at 08:34 AM
molson
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · picture perfect yield and what body used


kevinsullivan wrote:
National Geographic photographers on average shoot something like 29,000 shots per story. If a NatGeo story prints, say, 12 photos on average, that's less than 1/2000, or 0.05% "picture perfect" results, from a world's top photographer.


That's really a silly statistic - they only have so much room in the magazine to run photos for each article - it's not like they publish every good image from a shoot.

You can rest assured there are many, many more "keepers" out of those 29,000 images that are returned to the photographer for eventual publication in other venues.



Apr 22, 2013 at 08:39 AM
dhphoto
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · picture perfect yield and what body used


Lars Johnsson wrote:
I use LR or CS6 on every image I shoot. Even the ones that I belive are good.
Don't you shoot in RAW?
Don't you sharpen your pics? Would you even print a photo without sharpen it? or doing nothing at all?


+1

Maybe 1% look perfect enough to leave alone, 99% get some sort of RAW proccessing, even if it's only sharpening.

That is the utter beauty of RAW and (to me) the essence of digital



Apr 22, 2013 at 08:44 AM
Gunzorro
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · picture perfect yield and what body used


For years, all I've shot was RAW, and all the images get some sort of PP, even though I consider it generally minimal.

Lately, I've started to explore (of all things!) jpgs! Mostly for fun, but I'm pretty impressed with the in-camera processing and the output -- very punchy. I still do minor tweaks in PP on the jpgs.

And harkening back to film -- that was a nightmare! Starting with something like 4x5 film, then going to inter-negs for printing; or masking and Cibachrome prints, spotting/retouching/airbrushing, and then on to drum scans, Photoshop and color separations -- and finally a printing press. Whew! Much more time consuming and terribly expensive compared to what we can do on our own today with digital files.

If your question is: Do different bodies have a major impact on the output images? I'd answer in the affirmative. No way around that.



Apr 22, 2013 at 09:01 AM
Access
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · picture perfect yield and what body used


I think yield is a very artificial or meaningless number. How you get there doesn't really matter, I'll take one spectacular photo out of a thousand over 50 good photos out of a hundred, any day.

The body can speed up the shooting or make it more convenient, sometimes it can even 'hit' a shot that another may miss (depending on what you shoot). But it won't make a spectacular photo, that's really up to you.



Apr 22, 2013 at 09:29 AM
David Baldwin
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · picture perfect yield and what body used


"You are lucky if you take one, maybe two good pictures in a year"

~

Thomas Hoepker



Apr 22, 2013 at 11:45 AM
Beni
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · picture perfect yield and what body used


Used to bracked trannies and the negs were worked during print. Very rare that a picture could not do with a tweak or two in the raw converter, I've never found a camera that good at AWB that it doesn't need some work.


Apr 24, 2013 at 12:15 PM
artd
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · picture perfect yield and what body used


rogerwilco wrote:
Well not sure if the body makes a difference but what I would like to know is how many picture perfect shots say out of a 100 pictures taken are perfect no Lightroom or CS6 needed or any other software? My yield has gone up to about 80percent no color or wb work needed and I use the 7d and 5D2 and over the last 2 years shooting with the 5D2 my percentages have increased. Now what are your numbers and what body used?
Roger


Zero.

Every photo I don't trash goes through processing. Some less. Some more. But all do.



Apr 24, 2013 at 01:14 PM
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