Loads of my old pictures are blurry???

[ahelg]

I decided to start tagging my photos today to make it easy to find things. While going through the photographs I noticed just how many bad shots there were. Loads of pictures I took with my old digital compact where blury. I never really thinked about it before (I didn't care much about good photos at that point, just took them to remember the situation).

Also I noticed just how many useless photographs I had in my library. Many of them almost identicle. I'm only half way through my collection and already I've deleted around 400 photographs because there just wasn't any point in keeping them. There were several times were I'd taken three or four photographs practicly identicle except for exposure, etc. So I deleted the duplicates and kept the best ones. Makes me wonder just how many more useless shots are in there. I really must spend more time reviewing my photographs when I import them from my camera so I don't have to go through all this again.

 

[James79]

I know what you mean, I've been sorting out my archives recently. It was this sort of thing which made me start reading up on "proper" photography and wanting a "better" camera.

"What, you mean there's different shutter speeds and stuff" :er:

I look at pictures from about five years ago and just wonder what the hell I was thinking.

 

[Alex_B]

"What, you mean there's different shutter speeds and stuff" :er:

That means probably playing with the settings, and not sorting out the rubbish later.

But then again, some years later you might change your opinion about what you considered tubbish, that is why I keep most images ...

 

[Garbz]

It's amazing how many of my friends show me images they have seen a hundred times and don't realise how bad it is until I point out that the subject is out of focus and the background is sharp.

The same thing goes with distractions. As you get better with composining photos and understanding or changing what a good photo means to you, you may go though your old collection and realise that wonderful picture of your girlfriend has some anoying woman in the background wearing fluro coloured pants!

 

[James79]

But then again, some years later you might change your opinion about what you considered tubbish, that is why I keep most images ...

Heh, I've got just about every single image I've ever taken (film and digital), whether I think they're good or not. Compulsive hoarder

It is disappointing sometimes to go hunting for an image that you remember with fondness, only to discover that it's technically not all that good. That said, it's amazing what can be salvaged from a "useless" photo with some clever photoshoppery.

 

[ahelg]

It's amazing how many of my friends show me images they have seen a hundred times and don't realise how bad it is until I point out that the subject is out of focus and the background is sharp.

That's exactly one of the problems I noticed with photos I took back in 2003, when I got my first digital camera (an olympus Mju 300). I found pictures with sharp background and blurry people. Just no point in keeping them because sometimes I couldn't even see who they were.

I also noticed that a lot of pictures were crocked (is that how it's spelled?). I also noticed that pictures taken after I aquired a D70 are not corcked, no doubt thanks to the help lines that are displayed when you take photographs. That has been an invaluable tool to me and something I can no longer live without when photographing.

Also I've now finished going through my library. I only had 2500 photographs to look through as I havn't used much digital untill a few years back. I've also done some "rough" tagging. I've basicly put in a tag for where the photograph was taken, e.g. "Spain, Albarracin". Now I just have to add descriptions that I might find usefull to the photographs, like who's in it so I can easily find all the photographs of, e.g., my brother, if I should need to. The only problem I'm having is deciding what information should go in the tags and what information should go into descriptions. Should my brother have his own tag or should I just put his name into the description of the images?

 

[Tolyk]

How would you best be able to find the photo again later? If his name were in the tag or description?

Personally, if it were me and I used the tagging system I would tag it as a Portrait and then put the names in the description..

 

[ahelg]

The thing is, it doesn't seem to matter much if I put it as a tag or as a description. I find it both ways by typing inn what I'm looking for in the search box.

 

[MACollum]

Sometimes my emotional reaction to the subject or the memory of "being there" can interfere with my ability to judge the photo's quality. Many of the photos I took with my p&s (when I was first getting into photography) I thought were great at the time but now when I look at them I see that while some were good, most sucked. At the time I didn't know there were so many elements that went into taking a great photo.

BTW, when you all tag photos, do you right click and go into Properties or do you use a program? I usually right click but it's so tedious that I usually don't tag at all, though I'd like to.

 

[LaFoto]

Interesting to read about your working on the archives, Ahelg, and your finding out today that what you thought was ok back then actually strikes you as "crap" now.

My father is working on a huge documentation of my home town's friendship with a community in Northern Ireland and has material/photos from back in 1950 to sort through, evaluate, scan etc. And he phoned me and said: "Do you remember there was a group over in 1982? Seems like we don't have a single documentation of that group's visit, do you think YOU have taken the odd photo at the time?"

Well, I took out my negative folder, went through the index, found out I had filled the whole of two rolls of 36-exposure films in all that summer shock: <- that is unbelievably few photos only for one whole summer, so I say today), 12 of which were photos of that group's stay over in Germany. I did not have any prints of those negatives, though, and I don't read negatives too well. My sister can tell from a colour negative if it is in focus or not, I am practically "blind" when it comes to that sort of evaluation. So I put that sheet of negatives into a cardboard envelope and mailed it all to my dad who can scan the negatives and look at them as positives.

Two days after I had mailed him the negatives, I phoned to ask if the Deutsche Post had done its work, and indeed it had done its work fine ... only Corinna had not produced anything of value ... ehem Photos taken indoors ... don't ask me what flash I might have used at the time, the camera was an all-manual Rollei35, I know that much, and I apparently estimated all the distances wrong, so all the persons are blurred and the backgrounds sharp. Hmph. That is probably why there never were (or never existed for long) any prints: either I saw them and tore them up right away or the lab saw the technical errors and never produced them in the first place (but I guess it was the first).

So there: old work of mine - no good at all.
OK, the 24 outdoor photos (which had nothing to do with the visit of that group of Northern Irish youth to Germany) all came out fine and I still have the prints in albums. No masterpieces, either, mere snapshots, but technically not so faulty as those first. Ah well...

All my dad said as comment was: "Well, erm... as to those photos you mailed ... what can I say ... you have undergone a huge development! Let's leave it at that."

Heehee.

 

[Alex_B]

... you have undergone a huge development! Let's leave it at that."

Well ... when I go through my archives of the last 15 years and look at some of the really old photos, then I am really amazed how little I improved since then :lmao: ... this is probably more frustrating than your experience

 

[LaFoto]

Why?
You were BORN GOOD! I wasn't.
I had to live for over 40 years, and take snaps for at least 30 years, before I started to develop at all (photographically, that is). Now I am OLD and just beginning to "see"...

 

[Alex_B]

Why?
You were BORN GOOD! I wasn't.
I had to live for over 40 years, and take snaps for at least 30 years, before I started to develop at all (photographically, that is). Now I am OLD and just beginning to "see"...

Each of us is older than someone else, so we are all old with respect to some reference. Just change your reference point here :hug::

And I was not born good! I was just able to take mediocre images with 12 and I am happy I did not lose this ability. There was some technical improvement, and maybe the percentage of useable images has risen slightly, but no steep learning curve I suppose

 

[LaFoto]

Well, your mentioning that you started taking pics at 12 makes me think back to when I first got that Rollei35. I was 13 ... and don't have a single negative from those times in my possession. Now I asked my sister if she maybe has all those negatives in her folders that also I produced - or if I ever used that camera at all, which I don't know, either. But I think I would have, now that I owned it? But I don't KNOW!

And my sister is so busy working on that mammoth show/documentation of 57 years of friendship with that Northern Irish community ... she is quite reluctant to go look for me, I'm afraid.

The only photos I took with the Rollei and have in my possession are slides taken during our class trip in 1975 (that makes me 15 at the time) and slides taken during yet another class trip in 1977 (add two years :greenpbl: ) to Prague. And some of those photos are on display on TPF somewhere and should still show, for I can't remember to have taken them down from the server, or have I? Ugh, maybe I have....... :scratch:


ETA: no, I have not, here is the_first_lot and here is the_second .

 

[Alex_B]

well, these are the oldest images I posted on here (15 years ago):
http://thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61715

and here are some of my first slides ever (about 10 years ago):
http://thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=61276
(just realised those weren't my first, but pretty close to it ...)