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Author Topic: Too many pictures  (Read 2463 times)

armand

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Too many pictures
« on: March 17, 2014, 12:24:48 pm »

With digital it is said it cost nothing to take a picture. So I shoot often and many times several of the same subject just to make sure a technical error (focus, exposure,etc) didn't ruin what I wanted. It is also said that you cannot really evaluate a shot on the camera screen and to wait to get home before deleting too much, at least not those obviously bad.
So you get home and maybe delete some, shoot more, delete less and soon you have thousands of shots that need some cleaning.
After deleting 3000-4000 shots only since summer I realize it does cost something to be trigger happy, time. Way too much time.
So how do you keep yourself in control, and mostly how do you quickly select what you want and get rid of the rest?
Imagine 5-10 shots of something that look similar at the thumbnail level but I have to pixel peep to select one or two which have the proper focus, and many times they are very close, so I waste a minute or two just for that.

Petrus

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #1 on: March 17, 2014, 01:38:43 pm »

I go through the shots with LR, giving all the frames worth considering one star rating. If there are multiple shots which are quite similar, I rate several best ones with a star. At this stage I do not pixel peep, yet, just look at the content and composition.

At the next stage I filter the catch with "rated only" filter and start conversion. If there are several similar frames I pixel peep for imperfections and rate them zero, also take the composition etc into account. If all variations are soft or something, I might go back to all RAWs and check if there is a technically perfect version worth considering. In a typical case I rate maybe 10% worth considering, and convert 6-8%. Out of those converted less than half reach the end of the line, submitting them for publishing or making a slide show out of them. If necessary they are further tweaked with PS and NIK.

I do not throw the RAW files away, hard disk space pricing seems to diminish as fast as my RAW file collections grows, so I just keep them all and buy a bigger disk every other year. I think the trouble of discarding useless frames is not worth the time. Old disk are used for backup (one full set of everything, one extra set of converted files).
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Jim Pascoe

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2014, 02:08:17 pm »

Perhaps you are worrying too much.  Unless the picture is very important, does it matter if the odd one is imperfect?  For most of my personal pictures I rarely make more than one frame - perhaps two.
For my work pictures I will shoot more, but then if the picture is not right it will not sell.

In either case, the secret is probably to edit the pictures promptly when you get back home.  Go through them quickly culling all the poor pictures and only keep the best.  This can be a difficult discipline I admit!

Jim
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Christoph C. Feldhaim

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #3 on: March 17, 2014, 02:17:26 pm »

The answer is simple (in a sense of not complicated) but not easy:

Shoot like you were shooting a 4x5 camera.

Deliberately compose every shot, think if you really want to work on the resulting image, think if you might consider printing it.
That's how I keep my keeper rate up and my frustration down.
The idea to miss a great shot is bunk.
Better miss a great shot than being frustrated your whole live because of cluttering your HD with junk.

Cheers
~Chris

RSL

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #4 on: March 17, 2014, 02:37:45 pm »

Depends on what you're shooting. If you're shooting something you'd have shot with a view camera in the old days, set up on a tripod, attach a cable release, go to mirror up, compose very, very carefully, and shoot several frames just in case something unexpected has intruded into the scene -- something you've missed. But if you're shooting something like the group of pool players I shot about an hour ago, shoot a whole bunch of frames, knowing you're going to dump most of them. In a group shot like that you can depend on somebody having his eyes closed in a few of the frames, and some guy with an incipient sneeze in one or two others, and a few others where somebody is putting on a "funny" face or just looking pissed, a face that doesn't fit with the others. In that kind of situation you can't really go back and re-shoot, so make sure you have what you need before you quit.
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Petrus

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #5 on: March 17, 2014, 04:04:55 pm »


Better miss a great shot than being frustrated your whole live because of cluttering your HD with junk.

Cheers
~Chris

My method: pick the best shots, convert and edit those, forget the rest (let them rot on that megatera hard disk). Frustrated, why?
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Iluvmycam

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #6 on: March 17, 2014, 05:15:52 pm »

Perhaps you are worrying too much.  Unless the picture is very important, does it matter if the odd one is imperfect?  For most of my personal pictures I rarely make more than one frame - perhaps two.
For my work pictures I will shoot more, but then if the picture is not right it will not sell.

In either case, the secret is probably to edit the pictures promptly when you get back home.  Go through them quickly culling all the poor pictures and only keep the best.  This can be a difficult discipline I admit!

Jim

Yes good advice. If something has potential I will shoot from a few angles and exposures. If not, 1 or 2 shots for snapshot material. Just got to do the best we can for balance. I try to delete the junk asap, but many times it takes me too long just to look at them.
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Isaac

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #7 on: March 17, 2014, 10:47:32 pm »

After deleting 3000-4000 shots only since summer I realize it does cost something to be trigger happy, time. Way too much time.

So how do you keep yourself in control, and mostly how do you quickly select what you want and get rid of the rest?

By understanding which subjects currently interest me most and not taking the other photographs, thereby managing the whole attention budget for photography.

By trying to delete most images, and selecting just a few that I might like to explore and a few which I already know are failures but hold a lesson for me.

By letting some time pass and then taking another look and deleting some more, before starting work.
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Alan Klein

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #8 on: March 17, 2014, 11:31:41 pm »

Switch to manual mode.  That'll slow you down.

Jason DiMichele

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #9 on: March 18, 2014, 08:14:10 am »

In either case, the secret is probably to edit the pictures promptly when you get back home.  Go through them quickly culling all the poor pictures and only keep the best.  This can be a difficult discipline I admit!

Jim

Hi Jim,

On the flip side, I typically wait a short while before editing my shots (I'm in the shoot few crowd) as to let the emotion from the shoot become a little distant. I will always remember a good trip or a great outdoor experience but sometimes a moment you fell in love with can bias one's keeper choices.

Cheers,
Jay
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Jason DiMichele
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Jason DiMichele

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #10 on: March 18, 2014, 08:16:35 am »

Shoot like you were shooting a 4x5 camera.

Deliberately compose every shot, think if you really want to work on the resulting image, think if you might consider printing it.

That's how I keep my keeper rate up
Cheers
~Chris

+1
+1
+1
-----
+3 :)

Cheers,
Jay
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Jason DiMichele
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Jason DiMichele

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #11 on: March 18, 2014, 08:18:32 am »

Switch to manual mode.  That'll slow you down.

Alan,

I know some local photogs that would just end up with a lot of incorrectly exposed images, no less. Lol.

Cheers,
Jay
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Jason DiMichele
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Jim Pascoe

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #12 on: March 18, 2014, 09:41:01 am »

Hi Jim,

On the flip side, I typically wait a short while before editing my shots (I'm in the shoot few crowd) as to let the emotion from the shoot become a little distant. I will always remember a good trip or a great outdoor experience but sometimes a moment you fell in love with can bias one's keeper choices.

Cheers,
Jay

Jay, yes that idea does have some merit I agree - I quite often find a gem from several years ago.  But then if it was deleted early on I would never know if it was any good so nothing to worry about.  Be content with what you have I say - it works for most aspects of life! Haha....
Trouble for me is - my best picture is always the one I have just shot, or the one I am about to shoot tomorrow.  I tend not to worry about older stuff.

Jim
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Jason DiMichele

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Re: Too many pictures
« Reply #13 on: March 18, 2014, 06:25:02 pm »

Jay, yes that idea does have some merit I agree - I quite often find a gem from several years ago.  But then if it was deleted early on I would never know if it was any good so nothing to worry about.  Be content with what you have I say - it works for most aspects of life! Haha....
Trouble for me is - my best picture is always the one I have just shot, or the one I am about to shoot tomorrow.  I tend not to worry about older stuff.

Jim

Jim,

True about forgetting what you may have had laying around because they were deleted. Wise life advice indeed! :)

Well let's hope that our best images aren't the ones we used to take. That might be a very unhappy realization. Lol

Cheers,
Jay
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Jason DiMichele
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