How much longer does my 6D have?

Wilt wrote in post #18482291
After spending the good part of a day shooting 1500 photos, spending merely another 15 seconds to initially look at, decide whether or not to keep, and to adjust each kept photo adds another 6+ hours to the day

Tell me about it. I hate that part. But I'm an amateur and I don't usually go out more than once or twice a week. Plus, as time has gone on, I find myself taking a few less photos because I know a bit more about bird behavior and can anticipate their movements more accurately. Hopefully, this next Spring, I'll have less photos to go through but end up with more keepers.

had a similar discussion with a photo competition judge that told me he had eleven seconds with each entry to pick a winner. i offered that if he couldnt dismiss a sub par pic in under 3 seconds he was maybe in the wrong job, and if he used the remaining time from each pic to just assess the good ones it actually gave him around fifteen minutes on each of the catergory winners and placed pics.
i imagine i'm going to get a similar response from you when i suggest that your 6+ hours is a little excessive. by definition there is only one best pic from a shoot, and im sure you can find that in under an hour or so...

bildeb0rg wrote in post #18482380
had a similar discussion with a photo competition judge that told me he had eleven seconds with each entry to pick a winner. i offered that if he couldnt dismiss a sub par pic in under 3 seconds he was maybe in the wrong job, and if he used the remaining time from each pic to just assess the good ones it actually gave him around fifteen minutes on each of the catergory winners and placed pics.
i imagine i'm going to get a similar response from you when i suggest that your 6+ hours is a little excessive. by definition there is only one best pic from a shoot, and im sure you can find that in under an hour or so...

For me, it isn't quite that simple. Several rookeries I frequent have 6 or 7 species of birds. I often end up with 3 or 4 photos if each that satisfy me. This usually includes a combo of stationary and flying photographs of each. So I wade through each series of shots to see what stands out. I can eliminate a bad photo in a couple seconds, that is true. For the rest, it takes some time. I don't post process all the images either, only the ones I think have a chance to be my best.

bildeb0rg wrote in post #18482380
had a similar discussion with a photo competition judge that told me he had eleven seconds with each entry to pick a winner. i offered that if he couldnt dismiss a sub par pic in under 3 seconds he was maybe in the wrong job, and if he used the remaining time from each pic to just assess the good ones it actually gave him around fifteen minutes on each of the catergory winners and placed pics.
i imagine i'm going to get a similar response from you when i suggest that your 6+ hours is a little excessive. by definition there is only one best pic from a shoot, and im sure you can find that in under an hour or so...

As Phoenixkh's response already hints at, 'it depends' upon the kind of shoot. And all day wedding is not 'one photo' but many hundreds of photos perhaps with 3-5 shots in a single group to be able to grab a good expression with no eyes closed for any single person.

Yeah 3-5 sec. to find a dud, but one should not be shooting many duds at all---missed exposures, missed focus, flash not fire...a professional should not get many of those kinds of errors. Sometimes they are unavoidable, as in suddenly a situation pops up and you try for a grab shot which is in a totally different lighting situation than you were actually set up to take.

If you really think about it, alotting only 15 seconds to choose a photo AND [do adjustments for optimaly shadows and highlights and overall exposure and WB] is underallocating time for that shot. If, ON AVERAGE, you spend 15 seconds that is rushing...keep in mind that:

• If you take four shots, throw out three and then spend another 50 seconds optimizing one, that is a 15 second AVERAGE for the 4 shots taken.
  
• If you take four shots, throw out two and then spend another 25 seconds optimizing each of the remaining two, that is also a 15 second AVERAGE for the 4 shots taken.
  
• If you take four shots, and only throw out ONE, and the other three are all 'keepers', and then spend 18 seconds optimizing each, that is also a 15 second average for the 4 shots taken.
  

I shoot about 400-500 shots each NBA game, run all images through a conservative adjustment filter I designed via a bulk action, then go through each image to crop for composition or to cull, a few might need special attention. I can do all that in about 90 min or so. The more you can automate the better!

So 1500 shots 270 minutes or 4.5 hours, vs. my estimate of 1500 shots in 6 hours.
It wpould seem that NBA games can be somewhat 'cookie cutter' from the standpoint of lighting situation for the shooter...find one 'solution' and use it for all shots. Shall we agree that 1500 shots needs 5 hours to cull and RAW convert, on average?

Wilt wrote in post #18482585
So 1500 shots 270 minutes or 4.5 hours, vs. my estimate of 1500 shots in 6 hours.
It wpould seem that NBA games can be somewhat 'cookie cutter' from the standpoint of lighting situation for the shooter...find one 'solution' and use it for all shots. Shall we agree that 1500 shots needs 5 hours to cull and RAW convert, on average?

You are correct, I have the recipe nailed pretty well in camera for the games. The last wedding took me about 2-3 hours for several hundred shots, because I had to go back to the raw a few times for recovery. So yes, to really vet out pics, one can probably get through 300 an hour assuming they were on their game for proper exposure and settings. You don't count the time for Raw conversion though because that is done in bulk, and you are free to do other things like shoot more.

Tell me about your recipes.

I can try to write down all my in-camera settings, but it really is specific to the venues I am shooting in. A different venue would require somewhat different settings. If it help you with something you are shooting, I can take some time running through my C3 settings.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #18482636
You are correct, I have the recipe nailed pretty well in camera for the games. The last wedding took me about 2-3 hours for several hundred shots, because I had to go back to the raw a few times for recovery. So yes, to really vet out pics, one can probably get through 300 an hour assuming they were on their game for proper exposure and settings. You don't count the time for Raw conversion though because that is done in bulk, and you are free to do other things like shoot more.

Nope, my previous estimates were only for DIRECT HUMAN INVOLVEMENT.

bildeb0rg wrote in post #18482380
by definition there is only one best pic from a shoot, and im sure you can find that in under an hour or so...

But most of us are looking for a lot more than just the one best pic. We are looking to select out and edit ALL of the unique images from a shoot that are "marketable". . If one is going to submit images to, say, 7 or 8 different publishers, and each one of those publishers has us sign contracts that guarantee first rights to all images received, then, of course, we need to come away from a shoot with a heck of a lot of good, solid, marketable photos so that we have several unique images to submit to each one of the publishers we work with. . And we need to make careful choices so that an image sent to one publisher isn't so similar to any of the images that we submit to other publishers, else we will get in legal trouble for violating the terms of our contracts.

In other words, going through images from a shoot is a very complex process because there is so much that we are doing with the images, and we are seeking to maximize the potential for sales from each and every shoot we do. . Just looking to find the best photo - what good would that do? . How does that result in multiple licensing sales to sundry photo-buying entities?

The whole context of this thread has been that of working professionals. . It's not like we're doing this to enter some hobby photo contest, where we would just need "the best" photo.

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too much to quote, so i'll just say if a working professional can't get it right in camera and need to pp every image to make it useable/saleable then, to me, that's job creation. if you take 5 shots of group to get all eyes open, then only discard one, why are you still working up the other 4? surely you should be discarding 4 and giving the client the best? if you can't select the best image from five of a near identical group, then that surely is a product of your indecision.
thanks for taking that one line and quoting me out of context tom, but who mentioned hobby photo competitions? guy i talked to was on the judging board of the guild of master photographers and was giving a seminar on professional wedding photography that digressed to completions. and yes you all gave me the same answer he did.

Not quite so fast and oversimplified!

• You have overlooked the fact that, if you are shooting available light, perhaps the shadow areas are a bit darker (and almost detailess) and the photo would benefit by raising Shadow areas up a bit in brightness because to expose the shot brighter might invite blown out highlights. That has NOTHING to do with your skill as a photographer.
  
  
• Or you have a portrait of a person, and a too-obvious skin blemish that the sitter would appreciate making just a bit less obvious. That has NOTHING to do with your skill as a photographer, if the blemish that day is visible on the most attractive side of her face.
  
  
• Or you have a team sports action shot, and by cropping just a bit you remove some very distracting elements in the background. That has NOTHING to do with your skill as a photographer.
  
  
• Or you crop a shot more tightly in order to get a closer crop of an expecially beautiful shot of the bride's face, although the shot was made deliberately to include a lot of the bridal party. That has NOTHING to do with your skill as a photographer
  

Just to chime in on what this camera does and what a busy day can look like. I photograph homes/buildings of all kinds. Ive shot somewhere around 3000 locations. This body has done around half of them. I start shooting at 8 am. Shoots take 1.25h/ambient, 1.75h/artifical, yield 40-100 photos in brackets. 30m driving per shoot. It takes 1.75h to edit/shoot. I can do 7 or 8 in a day around solstice. There's very little sleep involved.

I don't need to cull all that much. I only take what I want to get, there's very little guessing at this point, I shoot fixed aperture and can eyeball the shutter. Settings are a moot point.

I also have a staff of 4 to help with pretty much everything else.

Once again you appear to be over-simplifying things. . Many of us are trying to take the photos from a shoot and market many different images to many different potential buyers. . But we are not allowed to submit the same photo to any two buyers. . So yes, there is a need to select and PP many slightly different versions of the same basic photo. . And this is normal, not exceptional.

This has nothing to do at all with entering an image for any kind of photo contest, be it a pro contest or a hobby contest. . Contests just aren't a regular, everyday part of the professional's workflow, which is what we were talking about in this thread (everyday shooting and workflow).
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