Ratio of good photos per shoot

[shniks]

When you go out and shoot, how many decent photos do you manage to get? Do most of them turn out good? Half of them? Or are you like me and maybe get 1 or 2 decent ones out of the 100 you shot?

For some reason I think that everyone else is filling their cards with good photo after good photo. Or maybe I am wrong and almost everyone ends up with a high ratio of crappy pics to good pics.

Is it just professionals that manage to get it right more often than not?

[etaf]

i'm NOT pro - and I get maybe 1 or 2 out of 50 I like - but not from a technical point of view , just from my criteria - would I print out and stick on the wall

shooting a horse jumping even recently - i took 300 images and liked 22 - but quite a few where the same just with different horses - I guess if i where to put up for sale, as my criteria , then it would be 200 out of the 300, i would display

[gonzogolf]

It helps to define your terms. Good as in properly exposed and in focus? or are you aiming a bit higher and talking about every shot being worthy of a poster sized wall print? I go back to the dark ages of film. One of my photography instructors told us that a good ratio of keepers was 16-1, basically you should be able to get two quality shots out of a 36 exposure roll. But digital has changed that in two ways. Since the only limit is the size of your card you can shoot a lot more to explore the different approaches to a subject. This means a lot of people blast away and then sort it out later. Digital should allow you to get it in less tries because you have the review screen and histogram to tell you got it right so there is less need for bracketing and such, but it doesnt seem to work that way.

[etaf]

One of my photography instructors told us that a good ratio of keepers was 16-1

I would go along with that for

about every shot being worthy of a poster sized wall print?

and as I'm new to digital SLR - I would say , where I took a roll of film in the past , I would be 100x that now at least , in fact , I have taken c1500 shots and majority - just playing around to get to know the effects
After a recent trip to a park, i thought about if i had film loaded I would have taken a 1/10th of the shots

[SkipD]

Originally Posted by shniks

When you go out and shoot, how many decent photos do you manage to get? Do most of them turn out good? Half of them? Or are you like me and maybe get 1 or 2 decent ones out of the 100 you shot?

For some reason I think that everyone else is filling their cards with good photo after good photo. Or maybe I am wrong and almost everyone ends up with a high ratio of crappy pics to good pics.

As mentioned above, you really need to define "crappy pics" and "good pics" for anybody to give you a meaningful answer.

I generally get a very high percentage (almost always well over 90%) of my images technically usable - in focus and properly exposed. However, the variables of the subject material and what I'm trying to do with the composition, lighting, etc. affect how many of the images I make that really please me. As one example, a person's facial expressions in a portrait shoot are not always ideal for a good portrait.

Sometimes a photographer will be experimenting with lighting details or ways of composing an image. Many of the resulting images won't be ideal even though all could be technically excellent. The "keepers" are the images that meet the photographer's original intent when creating the images.

Originally Posted by shniks

Is it just professionals that managed to get it right more often than not?

My guess is that photographers who totally depend on a camera's automation generally have a lower percentage of technically acceptable images than photographers who do more of the thinking than the camera does.

[sandpiper]

This question doesn't have a simple answer, so much depends on what you are shooting.

If I am out doing scenics, or night shots etc. I will have time to think about every shot properly before I take it. I may only take a handful of shots during a day out shooting, but I would expect them all to be "decent" shots, with hopefully one or two I am really proud of.

On the other end of the scale, I might be shooting drag racing. In that sport spectacular incidents can happen without any warning, if you try and react when it starts you have missed it. So, I capture the start of every run using burst mode, resulting in maybe 20 shots or so from each few seconds race.

Virtually all of those will be binned, I would hope after a weekend event (and several thousand shots) to have some decent shots around the paddock, some more taken as cars manouevre around the staging area, and mechanics work on them and I will generally keep the best pan shot of each interesting car as it blasts down the track.

I have never worked out my "success" rate, but most paddock shots are technically decent, plus I have had time to set up properly for each shot, and choose my angles and timing for a decent composition. In the end I will only pick the most interesting ones to work on, the others will be record shots of the event. Again, they should be mostly "decent" shots, with hopefully a few really nice ones.

Start line shots give a little less time to prepare, and angles are compromised from not being able to move around the subject the same. I would again expect most to be technically decent, but again will only work on the ones I really like, this will be a lower percentage of shots than with paddock shots.

Now, the racing shots. These should be correctly exposed etc. but because I am panning, and trying to show the speed with a relatively slow shutter speed, I expect a proportion to be lost to lack of sharpness on the vehicle. In addition this is where most shots get binned because the composition isn't great. A burst of several shots as a car comes off the line and passes me will be mostly uninteresting shots. If it does a good wheelstand, then there should be a nice one at it's highest point, plus I will hopefully get a nice pan shot as it comes by me. The shots going up and down in the wheelstand will be binned, as will the shots as the car approaches my position and goes away from my position, as the angle will not be as good as the one pan shot as it passes. So, probably 90-95% of actual racing shots will be uninteresting and not "decent" shots and be binned in the first cull. I will then select my favourites from what is left to work on further, to hopefully come up with a few good action shots I really like.

At an airshow, I tend to shoot a lot less shots, preferring to time my shots to give a good composition but again, keeper rate can be fairly low. With jets, I have a much higher keeper rate, as I use a faster shutter speed and most shots should turn out pretty decent. Prop aircraft though are shot at slow shutter speeds to get good prop blur. Keeper rate depends on how much I want to push that slow speed, I tend now to go quite slow and accept a high rate of shots will not be sharp enough, but that the I should get at least one decent, sharp shot with a good angle on each plane and pilot, and it should have really nice prop blur. I go for one really good shot, rather than a handful of lesser ones at a faster shutter speed.

With birding shoots, I expect to miss focus with some, don't necessarily pan accurately enough etc. So, again I expect some crap amongst the good stuff.

Keeper "rates" are really variable therefore, depending on what you are shooting, how much time and freedom of movement you have to set up each shot, and how much you are pushing the technical envelope in the cause of more "artistic" shots.

I would rate my percentage of "good" photos per shoot therefore as anything between about 5% and 100%. That percentage does not concern me, so long as I come home with some good shots (and hopefully one or two I really like) and haven't come away with nothing of something I particularly wanted to capture, such as an unusual aircraft at an airshow - I would want at least one shot of it, amongst the good stuff.

[rick_reno]

i'm in amazement at all of them, i think that 15 years ago this wasn't even possible.

[whuband]

Depends entirely on what you are shooting. If I shoot an event for some organization, it's well over 90%. If its a football game, the percentage is much lower and gets lower as the player ability goes up. If it's a volleyball game the percentage is lower still. Pics of my grandkids acceptable to their mother, 100%, but my ratio is about 1 in 50.

[Luckless]

For images that I personally think are 'good', maybe 1 in 600 or so for sports, 1 in 20-50 for family shots. For what other people seem to think, 1 in 30-50, and 8 in 10.

[chauncey]

Do yourself a huge favor and watch this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpHMu...feature=relmfu

[john5189]

Different levels of acceptability if just out and about like a tourist
Wall Hangers=1 in 100
Album quality 1 in 10

If I have the time to think about the shot and prepare the scene 1 in 3 are wall hangers But then they should be because you have made the photograph real before you've clicked the shutter open.

[Bosscat]

Depends what you have as a standard.

Who care what the keeper rate is, as long as the ones you keep make people go "WOW"

When I shoot racing the keeper rate is low, if I am hanging it out panning at low shutter speeds, but if I shoot railroad stuff, I set the shot up and wait for the train to arrive in the scene, and only if the light doesn't comply does the shot end up trashed.

I have seen event togs literally dump their cards, and after page or two of garbage, who will look through them all?

[shniks]

Thanks for your replies. It sounds like everyone gets some bad shots amongst the good ones. For some reason I thought I was the worst photographer because I didnt have a high keeper rate. Chauncey that video was great, thanks for sharing the link.

I guess what I mean by good and bad is - am I happy with them? Did they come out like I imagined? Are they technically ok and do they hold your interest? Are they worth opening up in photoshop for some editing?

[etaf]

I guess what I mean by good and bad is - am I happy with them? Did they come out like I imagined? Are they technically ok and do they hold your interest? Are they worth opening up in photoshop for some editing?

so on that basis - 1 in 25 maybe at the moment , and that may go down to 1 in 50/100 as i'm still thinking film and only just getting used to 5 frames / sec - so taking a lot more different shots and bursts of any action

Simply because theres no associated cost - i can try a lot of different things out and so would not expect to have many keepers on that basis

for example a picture of a swan - I may in the past have taken 2 to 3 shots- now maybe 20-30 whilst waiting/working for the right angle and light to appear

[pixiepearls]

I shoot moving kids, so I am happy if I had a 50% usable rate. With kids you have to be fast and attempt to get that split second they look at your or smile so it can be rough. With adult subjects my ratio is much higher like 90% if I've set up the shot right.