I see a post on how many shots we keep/burn (I keep 90% of mine).
What about the % of shots that are great. For example, I have about 4000 shots on my clicker and of that I would say I have 50 pictures that I would call awesome (that's 1.25%!). Now, given that I am a little over one year old in this hobby, maybe that's OK. I've read some articles where "pros" claim they get 10% keepers.
What do you get? Maybe the criteria should be nailed down a bit. I'm not talking about shots where the exposure is OK and the composition is OK, I'm thinking pictures that you could sell to a mag or somebody.
Landscape/Nature
What's the percent of "can sell" images
What's the percent of "pretty darn good" shot's that you'd keep anyway.
Portrait
What's the percent of "can sell" images
What's the percent of "pretty darn good" shot's that you'd keep anyway.
Well it depends on what I shoot but I would say that out of an averate 1gig card, I keep around 15-20 (10-15% keepers including burst copies) in TIF and size for printing. I burn to DVD all of my RAW files .
Also, I usually shoot in bursts of 3. I have found that sometimes the first shot is off where the second or third shot is exactly what I want so that reduces my percentage but increases my percentage of getting a good image.
I am not sure how indicative this is, because there is a balance between experince and shooting a lot to get experience. I have discovered that I have gone from about ~2-3000 film shots a year to around 5000 on digital. I am not sure if that is because we all own machine guns or it is because we dont have to buy film at 5bux a roll whenever we want to shoot.
I think the number of keepers depends on your level of exigence. I believe this increases in the time as the photographers skills improve, so the rate does not improve (or even decreases as says FretNoMore )...
I don't really know for sure, but I'd probably say 25% of mine are strong keepers that I can print and be proud of unless I'm just goofing around taking stupid pictures or trying out new techniques/equipment. I take my time with my shots, I never even get close to filling up my 512 card. I often take the same exact shot with different apertures to choose the best DOF for that particular shot.
The rest of the 75% are either angles that I don't particularly like once I see them on the monitor, not enough DOF or to little DOF.
If 25% of mine are strong keepers, I'd say that 3-5% of all my shots are "awesome" shots.
having said that, sometimes I go out shooting and come back with none that I really like. Sometimes I come back and I like just about all of them!
Lately I have been taking my tripod everywhere and really concentrating on making each shot count. I'm not doing sports shooting or anything that has to be timed perfectly, so I can afford to do that.
Edited by Daniel Buck on Jan 10, 2005 at 03:57 PM GMT
Hey... same for me!
But it really depends on what kind of shoot it is. For travel, usually I don't get keepers (I define keepers as pictures that I am *willing* and *able* to print a 30x20 out of it). If the shoot is planned, I would be very very happy to get away with just one.
FretNoMore wrote:
Contrary to what you might think, my keeper rate is dropping the more I learn.
These days I'm lucky if I get one I like from a shoot.
i would say about .5% of the pictures i take are considered by me "awesome", about 18-25% are keepers, 10% are maybes and the rest i just throw away to save space.
btw topic starter thanks for referenceing my threat cheers
Great question. I agree with FretNoMore....the more I learn (and the more of others work I see) the lower my keeper rate gets. I typically expose around 200-2000 frames in a week of intense shooting (depending if I'm using a view camera or a digital....). I'm happy with 1-2 great pictures for a week like that. Probably 5% can be trashed due to poor exposure or just plain old "what the !@# was I thinking".
I am super critical of my own work, and sometimes i will be shooting something say in downtown all night, right, and i'll self edit on the way home, thinking I got atleast 15 really great shots that I like. I will pop em open in photomechanic and only keep one of them -- some nights are like that.
For my dog sports photography, it's about 1 out of 10. I usually shoot about 1,000 photos per event, put up 100 or so for sale. Photos get culled for "misses" and "duplicates" however. I've got my flow down pretty well that there's a high number of "keepers" from which I get the absolute best.
For concert photography, it's about 1 out of 7, although I usually don't post more than 10 - 20 if the band was really really great.
For model work, it's about 1 out of 5, depending on the model mostly.
I don't shoot landscape, so no comment there.
I don't keep shots that I wouldn't sell or otherwise print. I don't see the point, really. They're not going to get any better sitting on my hard drive.
About 1% to 2% make it to the web and maybe 1% get printed. Out of 700 shots on the new body this month, less than 10 shots will be posted to the web and I will print about 4-5 of these. Maybe one will be made into a print of 13x19 or larger. A few percent get canned at in-camera editing. Some others are for personal use and may be sent to friends. In order to print, not only must the images meet the miriad of details one could define for a good technical image, but the image must make some kind of statement or represent a memory worth keeping (fond or tragic). I still archive a large portion of what I shoot, but this practice needs to stop !
I think I keep 10-15 out of each roll. Some more some less. I keep more B/W than I keep color though. These are shots I already have printed, so it isn't
I probably get 1 good shot outta 1 each rolls. I would define an awesome shot as one that floors me when I look at it and I haven't had any of those yet. I'm probably way to critical of my own work, but that's not gonna change. And it seems that the more that I look at ppls work here the less likely I'm gonna find that awesome pic in my collection.
)...
