How many pics do you keep?

[ron chappel]

Yes i guess some pro's have to keep copies of pretty much everything they take,but how about normal amateur users?

How many of the thousands of the shutter actuations we hear about have been burned to disc or *GASP* actually printed!! :D :D

I got around to counting my own pics tonight and out of the 5000 pics i've taken i've only kept about 400-and more of those will be deleted in time as i realise they'll never be printed or looked at again.

[Haifidelity]

I delete alot of shots because it's virtually free (sans Hardware costs) and even fewer are actually printed.

I dredged through printing a whole roll of 36 frames the other day, when all I wanted was maybe two shots from the entire roll. :(

-hza

[defordphoto]

I keep 90% of my shots. I delete the obviously bad ones out in the field. Once at at computer, I delete only the worst composed and all OOF shots. Otherwise I pretty much keep them all.

[Bluelens]

I'm finding that I download all the shots that end up on the memory card. Of course while I am out and about and start running low on space (need to get another card) I will quickly go through and delete the obvious bad ones. A home I keep everything in folders on the PC and eventually transfer to CDs. While I will only like about 3-8 of the images out of 100-200 that I shot, I will keep them anyway. With disk space being so cheap these days, and blank CD's even cheaper, I might as well.

I guess I keep everything for the same reason I have kept all my negatives. Because you never know when you might need some image later on down the road. While the complete image might not have been a sucess, I might need something for a background where it will be taken down to a 20% transparency or need something for a texture. On the side I work on a magazine with 5 other people and this has come in handy from time to time. We even took an image and combined it with a drawing our art editor made and viola.

Of course this is a long wordy version of ---> I keep everything just in case. :)

[vvizard]

I've taken ~ 5600 shots the half year I've had my camera. It will soon see a lot more action I think. I don't normally shoot much, but if shooting an event, I usually do 500-1000 shots. In easter I was lucky enough to be a (actually "the", as there where no other) photographers for the worlds biggest computer-party. I shot mainly candids, but also two concerts, and the first round in the European DDR-championship. On these three events I shot ~ 500 pics of each in less than 30 minutes. Shooting outside events is mostly testing. I seldom go outside "just to lookforabird", if I do, it's mainly for equipment-testing...

So, all my normal day-to-day shots usually get deleted quite soon, as they have no value to me. On events I just shoot, don't care to delete after reviewing on LCD even if the shot clearly suck. It drains batteries to on camera, and I got plenty of storage-room in the field after I started trusting my X-drive =) On the computer, I go through each picture I've taken, imediatly deleting the totally bad ones. Then I go through what's left, since I then have a vague clue about how many good shots are there. So then I again delete the "not-so-good" shots, and end up with the quite-good, and good on my computer. Printing.. Hmm, think I've printed 4 of those 5600, and all of them was printed this weekend.. But wow, prints surely is the way pictures from the 10D was meant to be viewed, so it'll be a lot more in the future, I promise =D

[Lamplight]

For me it varies. I may go out shooting one day and end up liking 80% of the pictures enough to keep them, and then the next day I may go again and keep 5%. It just depends on how much I suck on a given day. :lol:

[Olegis]

I keep almost all of my photos, except of the REALY BAD ones (OOF, completely out-of-exposure etc). So far my folder has about 150-200 subfolders with total of 11.000 photos - that's from the last two years and four digital cameras I had 8)
One day I would have to sit down, review all these photos, delete all the bad ones and to backup the remaining ones. SO much work to do ... :?

[RikWriter]

I pretty much keep everything that's not out of focus---I have an extra 80GB hard drive so I have plenty of room. I also burn my stock of digital pics to DVD for backup every once in a while.

[Scottes]

Just about 5,000 shots and I've kept about 1600. I'm sorting through and re-developing the RAWs in order to get a gallery and print them. I'm halfway through and I'm up to about 70 shots.

So 5,000 shots and about 150 are real keepers, ie; truly worthwhile. But 1600+ have been kept.


Edit:
I frequent another nature-related forum with mostly pro or pro-wannabe members, and they just went through this question, too. I think the general consensus there was that they had less than 1% keepers. I guess it's a lot different when it's a business?

I'm wondering why this is, out of curiousity. Over there, most won't even bother taking shots of the famous places in national parks in such. They won't even bother taking the camera out it seems, and will just drive by a gorgeous vista simply because it's "been photographed to death" in their words.

I can't understand this at all. Maybe my standards are too low?

[CoolToolGuy]

I do the same thing as Olegis - unless they are totally unusable (OOF, totally washed or dark) I keep them all. I may have a group of shots and I like one version best, but six months from now I may have another reason to like or use another one of the group.

[Jim_T]

I keep about 1/4 of my shots..

A lot are throwaway.. When I get a new lens, I usually run off a couple of hundred taking shots of things around the house in order to get a feel for the lens.. (DOF at different apertures, sharpness etc)..

I shoot a lot of wildlife.. I often put my 10D in continuous shooting mode and easily zap off 40-50 shots of a bird or deer or bear or whatever.. I go through the shots later and pick out the best in respect to pose, lighting and composition.. I may only keep one or two out of 50.. On one nature outing I took 300 shots and trashed them all after I got back and saw them.

I also bracket a lot when I have time to take still shots.. (especially at night)... Again, I only keep the best..

Out of over 20,000 shots, I've kept 5622..

[Sketcher]

I keep everything (except for the eye poking OOF, botched and unsalvagable) with the intention of culling the batch when space becomes an issue. That may be a while though as I'm running a 120GB System Drive and a couple 250GB Scratch/Data Drives.

Looking at my archive last month i recall being in the neighborhood of 23,000+ original images (I'm going to have to verify that tonight because it suddenly sounds like an astronomically high number - but that's what's stuck in my head). Roughly 95% are Large/Fine jpg as I haven't ventured into a RAW workflow yet...

I held off getting into photography until I bought the 10D because I knew that film processing costs would kill me before I got started; so easily half the pictures in that archive are pure test and learning series. An example would be this DOF test: ROSE (http://www.pbase.com/sketcher/rose_depth_of_field_test).

In my case saying that I have 23,000+ shutter actuations speaks little of any skill other than being able to mash the shutter button on an annoyingly frequent basis.

[EDIT] Was wrong about the image count -> actually at 18,338 images in 286 folders totalling 33.2GB after removing processed duplicates.

[robertwgross]

I dredged through printing a whole roll of 36 frames the other day, when all I wanted was maybe two shots from the entire roll. :(


What's a roll?

This _is_ a digital forum, isn't it?

---Bob Gross---

[robertwgross]

I spent a day at the San Francisco Zoo with my long lens on a tripod. By the end of the day, I had shot about 200 images, but a lot of those were in a fast sequence. I generally save only one or two out of a sequence of eight. In all, I had about ten good publishable shots, but that still makes for a good day.

---Bob Gross---

[PacAce]

I keep all my shots and they're all shot in RAW. Every one of them eventually get archived off ot CD and DVD. However, that doesn't mean that I process every one of them. I just select the really good ones since I don't have time to go through all of them for processing.

Why do I keep all my shots? 'Cuz I figure one of these days, they might come in handy and who knows, maybe I can create a CD library of stock images. :)

[karusel]

I try judge a shot like - is this shot good enough to be printed and framed and put on the wall? Can't really tell how many I keep, but the number is decreasing, I think, since I'm saturated with all sorts of images and want something that stands out, after all, I'm not doing tourist like sightseeing to-be-reminisced-years-later snapshots...

[IanD]

Download all the images into a new folder. Check each one out and delete the ones that don't standout. These get transferred to a backup drive. A couple of days later, i'll check these out again and further delete the ones that were close but no cigar. The real keepers go on another backup drive and then burned to CD.
Maybe 5% get CD'd but almost 90% of family/BBQ type shots get burned.

[EoSD30fReAk]

the realy bad ones are deleted right away, and the ones i'm not sure of are put in a special folder.
sometimes i look at the folder and decide wich one to keep and wich to delete

i've made about 6500 pictures and only kept 2500 of them.

and printed maybe 20 :?

[Vegas Poboy]

All that is in focus and good composition, maybe I'll need them one day for class or stock. Yes I have plenty cd's

[jimtfoto]

I keep virtually everything I shoot ... you just can't tell, as was mentioned earlier in the post, when part of a frame will be useful ... I've had my 10D for just under a year and have shot about 6,000 frames ... my wife has had her DRebel since last September and has about the same number ... everything is backed up (two copies) on CD and DVD ... I also make contacts and file those, although some of the earlier stuff still needs printing and filing ...

[scotgasch]

I keep them all....don't know exactly how many but I have filled 3 160 gb external drives and am half way through my fourth. :shock: :shock: :D

[Guillermo Freige]

I keep almost all the RAW files (except the really useless one, around a 10%), but convert to TIFF only the possible candidates (50-80%) and finally process about half of them. So I keep around a 25-40% of "processed" shots also in JPEG format.
Regarding printing, the number is really low. I probably printed less than 100 shots from near 8000 between my 2 cameras. Almost all of them ends in my gallery instead of in a printed format (except the really good ones usually at 8x10 size)

[Tom W]

I keep way more than I should. I've finally started to use the 80 gig external HD, but I have taken to purging quite a bit before I copy to CD and then transfer the saved images to the external. I suspect that this will prove inadequate in a few months.

[Blues67]

After deleting OOPS, duplicates(several of virtually the same and pic the best 1 or 2), off composure, etc. Ive narrowed it down to 11,252 as of this post. After this weekend of soccer and hockey games and a motorcycle hare scramble, add 200+.

[Mills]

I only delete the total disasters. That seems to leave at least 98% on CD and/or DVD.

[LazyPhotographer]

Download them all, delete the really bad ones right away. Sort by location, subject, date - then every couple of weeks I run through them again and delete more. As my shots get better (well, I think so!), I go back and delete more. I end up with 5-20 per 100 as keepers.

My plan is, when/if I learn PhotoShop, to run through again and see if they really are keepers. Then maybe, I'll print something seeing I have a new never used printer waiting.

I read once that if 10% of your shots are keepers, you're going damn good. Of course, my idea of a keeper and a professional's idea are worlds apart! But then again, you never know whan a duck shot wil come in handy so you can't delete them all. :)

[ron chappel]

Wow,some of you guys have a SERIOUS number of images :shock: :shock:
i'd hate to be the one to have to edit them... :roll:
I actually like editing and do it really well but doing hundreds is nothing but hard frustrating work.

I too used to keep pics just because i could see that part of the shot was very good and may be useable if merged into something,but definitely not anymore as i can never remember it when it might be usefull.Man i have trouble keeping track of several hundred images! :( Some of yous' msut have no idea what's in that hard drive,lol
Mind you,i bet you get some nice surprises going through them,finding good ones you forgot about

[Volatile]

Yeah, your kids are gonna be left with a lot of stuff to look over when you buy the farm. Either that, or they just slick the hard drive and sell the comp on ebay along with your photo gear for pennies on the dollar.

Sorry 'bout that...

I keep more than half of what I shoot, and I know I shouldn't. I have a feeling I'm not alone when I say, "I need to go through everything, delete a bunch of it, and re-organize it into a filing system that makes sense to someone other than me."