How many pics do yo take before you get a good one?

Kawi_T

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I've been taking tons of pics with my new nikon. 99% of them are crap. Just wondering how many of your pics you just delete before you get one that looks nice.
 
I've been taking tons of pics with my new nikon. 99% of them are crap. Just wondering how many of your pics you just delete before you get one that looks nice.

Don't delete until you are finished shooting. Shoot as many as it takes. Do not rely on your postview screen, it lies. Rely on histograms, they make everything easier!
Here is a great link to a nice piece on histograms. Clink on the link to the right titled "Histograms & Light Meters": http://sekonic.com/classroom/classroom_2.asp
 
I may take 50-100 photos or more on a job shoot but I only pic less than 10 usually to be published. Though I save them all for any future use on a project. Though im a photojournalist so what I do will be different than others. Over time you will find out what works for you, ive known some photographers go out on a shoot and take a few photo and vice versa, but one thing remains did you get THE SHOT.
 
For average sight-seeing, I generally keep 1/3 of the photos I take. When I go out and try to shoot something specific, or the one job I did, it drops down to about 1/6.
 
I've been taking tons of pics with my new nikon. 99% of them are crap. Just wondering how many of your pics you just delete before you get one that looks nice.

Heres hoping 99% is an hyperbolization of the situation.

Crap how? Bad lighting, blown out spots, weird color balance?
 
I feel that 30% of my stuff is deleted automatically. I'd go around 20% is workable and maybe 10% is usable. But I only thing 1% of my stuff is portfolio worthy (I can be hard on myself). That is for a typical shoot.
 
Difficult to say really. I could only go on the basis of a recent example. The 7 shots shown on the two threads below were taken from a total of 39 I took that morning. That's not to say that the others were particularly bad, I just didn't choose to use them and might choose to work with them at a later date.

Plant Study I-VI

Plant Study VII

On the face of it, that would look to be a pretty good hit rate, but other days I've taken more and come away with nothing worth taking any further.
 
some of my very first images were pretty good. limited by my that time equipment, but composition and exposure were great.
 
Just to piggy-back on what Double H was saying about not deleting your photos until your done shooting: When you delete directly from the camera you run the risk of corrupting your memory card or the other files. Its also a good practice to reformat your card after you download you pictures. Reformatting makes sure that you are starting your next shoot with a clean slate.
 
Kawi: I have had the same question recently. Once I took 500 shots and narrowed it down to 20 shots that I thought were decent enough for a photo book.

One of my biggest problem was camera shake/blur - so now I am looking into buying a tripod.

Also, I have a tendency to keep shooting indefinitely (since its digital) hoping that some shots will come out good. One advice I got was to not blindly keep shooting pictures, but think before each click; take a few seconds to think about what you want to capture.

mrvgson
 
Out of say 100 pictures, I keep maybe 10. Just remember that as long as your composition and exposure are pretty good, you can fix a lot of problems in Photoshop. I'm not saying "rely" on photoshop, but it can be helpful when you're done uploading your pics to your PC and you think "wow these look horrible".

I shoot RAW all the time just to correct white balance if need be. Most of the time I don't have to fiddle with WB on the PC though.
 
Difficult to say...

I do know I take a whole lot more and keep a whole lot less when trying to get a good photo of my 1 year old. Those little buggers just don't stay still.
 
Just to piggy-back on what Double H was saying about not deleting your photos until your done shooting: When you delete directly from the camera you run the risk of corrupting your memory card or the other files. Its also a good practice to reformat your card after you download you pictures. Reformatting makes sure that you are starting your next shoot with a clean slate.

Please do not spread rumours you heard from uncle Ted on the internet. We have enough misinformation.

You can delete to your heart's content on your camera. It's not going to corrupt your card anymore than deleting from a computer. Deleting is deleting...a 0 is a 0...

Also, you don't technically have to format the card. If you erase all images, you're still gonna be able to start all over again. it's nice to format cause it gets rid of any spare folders...but it's not necessary.

Oh, and I keep probably4 out of 5 pictures...but I would say only 1 out of 20 or maybe less is portfolio quality, or something I'd want to display in an online gallery or something.
Every time I shoot, my number of "portfolio" quality pics increases, and it's very encouraging.
 

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