How many photos do you take before you get a keeper?

[alexthecheese]

Just wondering how many photos people take really, before they think it's something worth keeping/printing/publishing.

Already taken 4500 photos on my camera and though I've yet to sit down properly and fiddle with them, I reckon I've only probably got a couple of dozen photos that I'd really be happy with.

Half the problem I'm having is getting to the right locations to take photos of scenery and buildings and whatnot. Work and social stuff gets in the way of this, though I have said to my mates that we should trek to London on a weekend and just wander around snapping away. It's only a 30 min train journey so it has to be done.

I have had a laugh taking it out on drunken nights with my 35mm 1.8 as you can get some really good photos even in pretty naff conditions. They're not particularly classy photos though.

 

[Dunky]

I'm not too worried about the keeper rate generally - if you're taking a picture of a building (for example), I'd quite happy take multiple shots from different angles and if one of those was a keeper then i'd be happy. No point in having lots of very similar pictures - pick one and run with it.

When working with a model, I might take about 200 or so in a shoot. This generally gets knocked down to about 20 or so to actually process and out of those (typically) I'd have 6-8 keepers. I'm quite harsh since you only have limited time with the model, so would rather snap away to get as many potential shots and do the review/cull later. Shooting tethered isn't really an option on my camera however if it was then I'd probably do things differently.

 

[Kevin Clark]

On a day out I seem to get about a 1 in 10 hit rate which I'm reasonably happy with having only been at it for a year.

 

[theheyes]

If I take 200 shots and 20 are worth printing, then it's a good day.

Recently though I've done a couple of weddings and odd jobs for people and I find my keeper rate much higher for those. I think it's because im more focused and economical with the shots. It's definitely a big contrast from when I'm wondering around doing my own projects.

 

[Zogger]

a true keeper.. a shot that I'm really happy with.. maybe 1 in 1000. Everything else I might like 1 in 10 - 1 in 50 depending on the location or subject but there's always just one or two things wrong with them.

Unfortunately my organizing & processing time is down to pretty much zero now so don't get to share or look at these photos anyway now

 

[Hodders]

Depends what you are shooting.

Landscape doesn't move, get the composition right, wait for the right light, click. High keeper rate.

Birds in flight, getting everything right, in focus etc. Low keeper rate.

Digital is cheap per shot so it doesn't matter how many shots you take so just experiment. That is 1 of the best things about modern digital cameras. There is nothing wrong with a low keeper rate as long as you think about each shot you take. Spray and pray is not a good way of learning.

 

[Devrij]

Well, I took 300 shots during my week in Ireland, and I only like 18 of them. Of those 18, only 3 are really good. In fairness, I did mess about on the ferry snapping away at waves and stuff, but I think the 1% mark probably stands for my "keepers", and maybe 10% are shots I'll process and most of those will be shared somewhere.

 

[=XDC=FluphyBunny]

About 20,000 and counting

 

[Paul11]

it depends on what i am doing..

if i am trying to only take good shots, i shoot less with more thought

if i feel like experimenting i take loads of shots most of which go in the junk

 

[Auraomega]

Recently though I've done a couple of weddings and odd jobs for people and I find my keeper rate much higher for those. I think it's because im more focused and economical with the shots.

This is true; my current photo to keeper ratio is dreadful, of the ~4300 photos I've taken, I'm only truly happy with 81 of them, and even then some of those aren't what I'd consider print quality. That's 53:1

Flip to my weddings, and in a general shoot I get 500 or so (usually on burst due to low light and no tripod allowed), of which about 300 are blurry so I won't even consider, that leaves me with 200 proper photos, of which I usually end up liking a good 75-100 and would consider about 10 usually as brilliant, huge-canvas-print-worthy; why? Because I'm more focused on getting the photos for a client rather than getting photos for my own pleasure where I'm more inclined to play around. That's more of a 20:1 ratio of keepers, which I'm quite happy about all things considered

 

[Ksanti]

In general shooting I'm fairly considered so most of the time I usually get about 10:1 keepers in terms of ones that I then eventually get printed at 6*4, depending on what I'm shooting. Obviously for things like water drops that falls to about 50:1.

When shooting portraiture in shoots rather than candids I seem to get much more considered and slow myself down a lot more, maybe it's an insecurity about not wanting to waste shots that a model's posed for? In any case then it goes up to about 2:1 in terms of keepers as everything becomes a lot more deliberated.

 

[Raymond Lin]

keep rate is around 20-25% on my mkii.

 

[D.P.]

+depends on what you call keepers, and what i am shooting. I don't simply delete failures and count the rest as good photos, I have several qualities levels.

All photos that have failed for technical reasons get deleted immediately. Actual failure rates may 2-5%, but I also take test photos to look at the histograms at different exposures, thus these test photos can make up another 5-10%, sometimes more in tricky conditions for landscapes at the golden hour, falling to 0% for things like PJ wedding where you cannot take the photos again.

Every other photo is run through a basic LR preset and is evaluated for further editing and destination. The bottom level is simply for personal/family photos, holiday snapshots, reminders of events or places I went to etc. These keep their preset processing and are quickly batched up and key-worded with the event/trip.

On the other extreme there is my portfolio work. Basically the aim is when I die a biographical collection of my life's work could be collected as 1 book of my highest work or the photos I am most proud of. these I deem to have the highest commercial value but I have o intention of selling them yet. If I made myself an art gallery this is whee they would be. I don't share these with any strangers. So far I am getting less than 1 photo a year into this set.

Then their is the high quality macro-stock work, mainly of architecture, landscapes and wildlife. These photos sell infrequently but at higher amounts, so far I have kind of neglected this set and should reevaluate my older photos. Everything is pixel perfect in this set, very well composed, great lighting (often golden hour etc.), was a great photo straight form camera needing minimal PP. But often the subject is fairly common and well photographed. E.g. a photos of half-dome at sunrise, there are lots of amazing photos of this subject from every angle.

then there is a microstock set for work that is often more abstract like textures, colours, architectural details, still life, every day objects, or simply lower quality version of the macro-stock work. The photos in this set are more to improve technique, expand my toolset, test commercial interest and learn details of the stock world. I have a photo here that took 30s to take and has several technical errors, was batch processed and poorly key-worded that has made me hundreds of dollars a year- it might pay for new Nikkor soon.


I also give a star rating to all my photos to simplify creating future sets of high quality photos.

 

[Raymond Lin]

+depends on what you call keepers.


Snip.

The number of photos that see the light of day / number of clicks.

 

[johnsparton10]

I might use about 1/10. At first i thought that this was not great but the more you take the better chance you have imo. So higher the better?!?

 

[Gaffer]

I notice a recurring pattern:

The FIRST one is a keeper. I then continue clicking in a vain hope for a better one...

BIF is particularly bad in this respect. One frame of the bird coming towards you. Three of it passing. Then a few more in the bizare belief that if you take enough shots, then somehow a sharp picture of the bird's tail will make up for the fact that you wish you had reacted and found focus faster...

Andrew

 

[THC_SsSsSnake]

im glad to see its not only me that is unhappy with so many of my shots.

 

[PermaBanned]

Perhaps roughly 1/3 of every roll? Obviously looking to improve that. Although i haven't shot much in a while, weather's never been favorable when i've had the time

 

[James J]

keep rate is around 20-25% on my mkii.

I'd say about the same, but highly depends on what I'm shooting. When doing flowers its around 80% as I know what I should be doing and settings to use before I even try and take the shot, making composition (when nature allows) easy.

Most of my throw away shots are the focus on my sigma macro lens being slightly out without me noticing but thats more my fault than the lenses really.

 

[Ksanti]

I might use about 1/10. At first i thought that this was not great but the more you take the better chance you have imo. So higher the better?!?

Nope for the most part. If you're consciously slowing yourself down, you're much more likely to think about what you're doing and get it right. For example if you've set the ISO at 6400 with no need to, you can shoot all you like but until you slow down and think about it, none of the shots will be as usable as had you just slowed down and thought everything through. Machine gunning the shutter doesn't really work, even in action where you might think it would. If you become a lot more deliberate in your shooting, your shots will get better, trust me