Quantity and quality

[gsgary]

Some types of photography demand the "spray and pray" approach. I took hundreds of photographs at a motor racing event last weekend, you cannot plan each shot at these events, you pick the car you want to photograph on the track and follow it, firing away, somewhere in the middle of that will probably be the one shot the subject loves.

Sport does not demand spray and pray, i hardly ever shoot 8fps usually 1 at a time, with sport you still have to plan your shots. The shot above you shot at 1/1600 hence no sence of speed

 

[MikeBcos]

Sport does not demand spray and pray, i hardly ever shoot 8fps usually 1 at a time, with sport you still have to plan your shots. The shot above you shot at 1/1600 hence no sence of speed

The car was coming almost straight at me, the sense of speed comes from seeing how far the left hand suspension is compressed on the corner, i I had just taken a single shot as this car came round the corner it is very doubtful I would have caught this moment.

I moved to a different section of the track for a later session to get panned shots, for those I could plan and just take one, but that particular corner demanded continuous shooting.

 

[gsgary]

The car was coming almost straight at me, the sense of speed comes from seeing how far the left hand suspension is compressed on the corner, i I had just taken a single shot as this car came round the corner it is very doubtful I would have caught this moment.

I moved to a different section of the track for a later session to get panned shots, for those I could plan and just take one, but that particular corner demanded continuous shooting.

This was shot from i similar angle at only 1/160 one shot only

 

[bdavison]

I think its important to mention exactly what continous shutter mode is for. Since there seems to be some confusion.

Continuous shutter mode is not for spray and pray photography. Its purpose isnt to allow you to trigger multiple shots with the hopes that one of them might be a good one.

Its a tool.

Continous shutter mode is for instances where you are trying to capture a perticular action that occurs too fast for you to trip the shutter and capture that action.

An example would be a soccer game. Where you are trying to capture the exact moment that a players foot contacts the ball. vs shooting continous hoping that one of the pics will be in focus, and framed right.

Many of the tools available on our cameras are used for both right and wrong ways. I can hammer in a nail with a wrench, but that doesnt mean thats what a wrench is for.

 

[Overread]

There is no one method that will get you perfect shooting or perfect keepers - it does not exist so don't beat yourself up trying to find that golden method. Regardless what works for one might not work for others - as you can see from this thread alone there are many ways to approach the same subject matter to get the results.

From what I have read and learnt this is what I have to say on the topic

1) do have an eye for your keeper rate and do try to always improve upon it, but don't let it control you and never think that all the film shooters shot perfect rolls all the time - heck some considered 1 in 36 (a single roll) a good keeper rate to have! Also many a digital shooter these days might have a really high keeper rate on computer - but they delete in the field anyway.

2) spray vs well timed shots - neither method works perfectly. From what I have read the best approach is to use both together - time that first shot to be the one you want, but use the burst of shots to give you backups - you might not nail the pefect shot, but you might get a good keeper from the others.

3) I would actuall echo a lot of what bdavison said about planning shots - and I do wildilfe (ok ok zoolife! ) and many times early on I would spray and not think - the animal was controlling the shots more than myself. Now I still spray shoot at times, but I also wait and plan - I try to be more creative and I try for different effects, sure manytimes this might mean the animal or scene is lost as I plan or wait or try to change a setting/position for an effect -- but I have noticed that my keepers have got a lot better for it (I won't say I keep more but that what I keep is now far better and more pleasing). In the wild its the same - the animal is a limiting factor, but don't let it control your shooting - you control that aspect, just work within those limits.

In the end I don't worry about me keeper rate - I work to get the shots I want and if I only keep 1 of 30 shots that is fine for me if that one shot is what I wanted (go try 3:1 macro and see how many shots you end up keeping of insects and how many are lost due to missed focus).

 

[gsgary]

I think its important to mention exactly what continous shutter mode is for. Since there seems to be some confusion.

Continuous shutter mode is not for spray and pray photography. Its purpose isnt to allow you to trigger multiple shots with the hopes that one of them might be a good one.

Its a tool.

Continous shutter mode is for instances where you are trying to capture a perticular action that occurs too fast for you to trip the shutter and capture that action.

An example would be a soccer game. Where you are trying to capture the exact moment that a players foot contacts the ball. vs shooting continous hoping that one of the pics will be in focus, and framed right.

Many of the tools available on our cameras are used for both right and wrong ways. I can hammer in a nail with a wrench, but that doesnt mean thats what a wrench is for.

Sorry but that can be captured with only one shot, and it is called football it's all about knowing the sport and timing

 

[Garbz]

Rufus: Try to look at it from other people's persepective too. There are a bunch of 14 year olds on this forum who had to save 2 years to get their DSLR which has a shutter life of less than 50,000 frames. What may be something that comes with using a camera to you, really could be un-necessary wear for them. $1 per 100 photos is a lot when you can't afford something, and when you have a device that can easily do 3000 photos in a day.

I agree with gsgary. Just because you can't doesn't mean you should. Knowing the sport, and knowing your camera has exactly x amount of shutter lag means that even motor sports, football, boxing, or any other high speed rapid action sport can be captured with 1 planned shot.

People who say things can't be planned for a people who simply won't try. Mind you go for it. If shooting at 8fps gets you the shots that you are selling by all means continue doing it, just don't assume that it's the only way.

More importantly what does this have to do with the OP who clearly is asking how he can get more keepers from his shot? The answer is not spray and pray and select the middle shot. The answer is slow down, or do something that slows you down like limit the amount of shots you can take in a day. Maybe that will make you think about what you photograph, and more importantly how.

Some people here are really self-minded.

 

[rufus5150]

Rufus: Try to look at it from other people's persepective too. There are a bunch of 14 year olds on this forum who had to save 2 years to get their DSLR which has a shutter life of less than 50,000 frames. What may be something that comes with using a camera to you, really could be un-necessary wear for them. $1 per 100 photos is a lot when you can't afford something, and when you have a device that can easily do 3000 photos in a day.

My view doesn't abscond people from understanding their limits. (You can safely assume that knowing ones financial responsibilities is a constant subtext under any of my suggestions.) That's a personal decision -- it doesn't take a genius to figure out, given X shutter clicks, how much each click costs based on the cost of the camera. If that is a burden to you, you need to do the math. We can hope 14 year olds can work a calculator. What I object to is people who say, objectively, you're being too hard on your equipment which you purchased and you use and doesn't effect me in the least. Because at that point it's just posturing.

I'm simply advocating using the tools how you want to use them. That's all. In time most people will learn one way or the other (I did, more on that, briefly).

More importantly what does this have to do with the OP who clearly is asking how he can get more keepers from his shot?

I seriously think people need to go back to 'reading comprehension' school because this is the question posed by the OP:

I'm curious: Do others shoot less? Succeed more?

He was asking if other people shoot less, or succeed more. Obviously he's not satisfied with his success rate, but that wasn't his question. It's what people wanted to turn the thread into.

But speaking of number of shots, I probably took 80% of my current shutter count in the first 6 months owning the camera. I shoot far less now and have a far higher keeper ratio simply because I took so damned many shots initially. I could have come here asking, for the umpteenth million time on the newbie forums what the relationship was between DOF and Aperture, but I didn't. Instead I shot a lot and studied the living daylights out of all of the shots I didn't like. I have used burst mode exactly twice in the last month. One was to try and grab a 2 year old sliding down a slide with his eyes open, and the other was a very on-the-move 14 month old. But I'd not gotten to where I'd been without shooting bazillions of throw away shots.

Plan all you want, I do, I think everyone else should too, but it's your money, your camera, if you want to shoot from the hip, no one should be telling you you're, a priori, doing it wrong.

 

[dave196]

IMO its all relative, who cares how many shots you take, i mean i enjoy taking photos, and considering its a photographers forum I think most people here would.
If you only need a few photos then just take what you need.
If your covering a larger scale thing, ie events, weddings, parties, taking hundreds and hundreds of shots may not be such a bad idea.
Me pesonally, I have a portfolio of 8 for the 2008/2009 time frame.
Have used various cameras, but total count would be around 15000?

 

[Garbz]

I seriously think people need to go back to 'reading comprehension' school because this is the question posed by the OP:

I'm curious: Do others shoot less? Succeed more?

Really? Because if you add the sentence right before that:

Out of all that, my "keeper" file has 20 shots in it, and some of those may not really belong there. There are only about four that I'm completely satisfied with.

I really don't think after saying on an online forum people seek help on, that he has 20 good shots in 5700, he is really after people boasting about how man photos they can shoot. Reading between the lines can be a big help. But hey I'll leave it up to everyone else what info they want to extract from this thread.

 

[JerryPH]

Bah! My equipment is paid for, and I fully intend to use the living CRAP out of it, that is what I bought it for. My camera does 8FPS and I literally used it 3 times at that speed for a "spray and pray". This was the result of one:

Now, I *can* use it like that when I need and want, but my general tendency is to take each picture with forethought, even the sporting event ones, but there are times that "spray and pray" is the thing to do to get the better results.

I could not care less if my camera is used hard, lasts a year or lasts 10 years, it is doing what I *paid* for it to do and sometimes it is at 8FPS and other times at 1 shot at a time, with great care and thought put into each shutter press.

Photography is extremely diverse and to say ONLY one method works under all circumstances are the words of someone wearing a nice big set of blinders.

The answer to the OP's question for me is... quality over quantity but sometimes for that one quality shot, I have to go through hundreds.
Guys, its not the destination that is important... it is the journey!

 

[rufus5150]

Guys, its not the destination that is important... it is the journey!

I agree that the journey for us may be important in the taking of the photograph, but I've yet have anyone come up to me and say "you know, these are all really nice prints, but I can pay you a few hundred for the ones you missed but learned something from?"

 

[JerryPH]

I agree that the journey for us may be important in the taking of the photograph, but I've yet have anyone come up to me and say "you know, these are all really nice prints, but I can pay you a few hundred for the ones you missed but learned something from?"

Lol... touché.

But even the pros had to pay their dues. I am sure they weren't born with a silver 5DS mkII in their mouths and in their lifetimes had to take a bad picture or 2 in as they learned.

We all cannot be Jasmine Star, someone that did not know how to work a P&S and 6 months after just opening her business was a $10,000 and up per event wedding photographer... lol.

For the professional needng to make the sale, it is a different point of view than someone like me, on that, I will say you have the right of it.

 

[TheOtherBob]

I think we've set up a false dichotomy here between (a) "good" photography that considers things like focus, composition, etc., and (b) "spray and pray" photography that just points and shoots, shoots, shoots at a variety of settings, hoping that one is right.

My experience (such as it is) is a little different. For example, I just got back from a vacation where I took about 2000 pictures. Of those, you can throw out about 500 right off the bat because I just flat screwed them up. (Not level, slightly out of focus, picture of the inside of my camera bag, etc.) But what of the remaining 1500? They're in focus, the aperture and shutter speeds are what I wanted them to be, they're (basically) level, the composition is what I was looking for. So do I have 1500 keepers?

Well, I won't delete them, but they're probably not "keepers" in the sense the OP means it. What I have are several things:

1. A pretty significant number of shots where the subject is not that interesting photographically, but is interesting to me as a memory -- snapshots, you might say. (For example, there's nothing photographically interesting about a sign saying "Hemingway lived in this building." But a cool memory...) I have probably about 1000 of those.

2. A fair number where I wanted to try out different approaches to the same shot. Would the shot be better with the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe as the focus? Both? Neither? All are perfectly good approaches -- and until you get it on the screen it's hard to know which you'll prefer. I have probably 250 of those "drafts" that didn't end up as what I might consider the final. I might delete some of them -- but not all of them, because some of them are cool shots, even if I preferred another approach in the end.

3. Keepers, in the broad sense -- shots that were exactly what I wanted, that are good shots, but that just don't knock your socks off. (The shot of the Eiffel Tower that was exactly like every other picture any tourist has ever taken, for example.) I have probably 245 of those. Any of these you could hang on your wall and be proud of having taken -- they're good shots. I'll probably load them to Flickr, but in all honesty I probably won't print any of them -- they just don't do that much for me.

4. Around 5 that I think are really artistically interesting and photographically well done, and that I'll probably return to again and again. These are the pics that I might actually print, frame, hang, etc. These are the real "keepers," as I think the OP means it.

So I shot 2000 pictures, and got 5 "keepers," in some sense. Does that mean I "spray and pray?" I don't think so -- I got 1000 memories, 250 interesting drafts, 245 "good" pictures, and 5 that I really, really love. I think that's a pretty good result.

(And, yes, 500 screw-ups...it happens less frequently the more I shoot, but it still happens!)

 

[Garbz]

Jerry did that picture take any inspiration from a certain Ninja shoot by a good friend of the strobist? Chase Jarvis Blog: Chase Jarvis RAW: Ninjas