Whats your keeper ratio?

Best photos for around the house -for me- are 50mm, as you can get close or far, but use aperture to control the sometimes messy background. Izzy is going to be two in October. I did not mean to hijack your thread, but thought maybe an example would illustrate better than a thousand words. specially with super wiggly kids.

threeinthenest wrote in post #5811844
Hey, thanks for sharing that about the 50mm, what is the deal with that? I am glad to hear you like your Sigma, would love to have the 24-70, but its so expensive and so heavy!

If you want the 24-70L but can't afford it, check out HERE the 24-60 is CHEEEEP! There is a Sigma 24-60 thread and while everybody loves this lens, there are a small number who have had to send it to sigma to get it calibrated due to focusing issues. Fortunatly mine came tack-sharp out of the box. Others who have sent it in (only have to pay for shipping.. covered under waranty) have been very happy after calibration.

As for weight, it's a very solid lens, but I don't find it heavy. The 24-60 weighs approx 550g (just a hair heavier than the Sigma 17-70 at 450g.) The 24-70 2.8L is much heavier at 950g!

I do everyday photography with my Nikon, and I kept 86% of the photographs for February and 88% of the photographs for April, the last two months where I have raw data. This excludes photographs that I already deleted off the camera before unloading it onto my hard drive.

threeinthenest wrote in post #5811765
Wow! Thanks everyone! My main issue keeping up with my kiddos, getting my 2YO to even look my way is extremely frustrating. I do have issues with focus, still trying to hone in on those skills! I pretty much only shoot with my 60mm, I really cannot remember when I last used my kit lens.........hmmmm, perhaps its me and not the gear...........hahaaa. Anyway, I just tend to have lots of elbows, cut off heads, never can catch a natural smile.....or maybe its just my kids! Anyway, hoping to invest in a few lenses in the next few months-probably the 50, 85, and Sigma 17-70. Sometimes I really hate my 60, it hunts like crazy-but again-probably me!

Keeping up with youngsters is like photo boot camp. Analyze you shots and what went wrong and you will improve rapidly.

PhotoJourno wrote in post #5811828
Sorry, I went and looked really quick. I took 32 frames, and three real keepers. Here is one, for example.

First a keeper, the second a typical almost good photo.

And the 1st is a keeper you will show all and the second is the one you will take some time about pressing delete as just because it is a bit oof does not mean you you do not want to keep it

doidinho wrote in post #5812822
Keeping up with youngsters is like photo boot camp. Analyze you shots and what went wrong and you will improve rapidly.

Keeping up with youngsters is like absolute madness

my keepers are less than 20%, but i find that when i use film, it's closer to 40%-50%. maybe i'm just more careful and deliberate when using film...

I think it depends on what i'm after. If it's a matter of composition capturing 'something' etc... it's a bit higher than the technically correct exposure and focus are right. For the most part I'm not that concerned with how many keepers I have to how many shots. I can say that once I switched to RAW and started using 1G cards vs. 2G cards my keeper ratio went up. The best advice given to me was by Condyk when he told me to pretend that I was shooting film and make sure you have the shot before pressing the shutter..

saravrose wrote in post #5815077
I think it depends on what i'm after. If it's a matter of composition capturing 'something' etc... it's a bit higher than the technically correct exposure and focus are right. For the most part I'm not that concerned with how many keepers I have to how many shots. I can say that once I switched to RAW and started using 1G cards vs. 2G cards my keeper ratio went up. The best advice given to me was by Condyk when he told me to pretend that I was shooting film and make sure you have the shot before pressing the shutter..

wow, that is great advice-a lot of times I find myself just shooting, hoping to end up with something, rather than being patient and waiting it out a bit, thanks for the reminder.



Great advice everyone, thank you so much!

saravrose wrote in post #5815077
I think it depends on what i'm after. If it's a matter of composition capturing 'something' etc... it's a bit higher than the technically correct exposure and focus are right. For the most part I'm not that concerned with how many keepers I have to how many shots. I can say that once I switched to RAW and started using 1G cards vs. 2G cards my keeper ratio went up. The best advice given to me was by Condyk when he told me to pretend that I was shooting film and make sure you have the shot before pressing the shutter..

Interesting point and really good insight, huh. I do see often photogs at a local T-ball game using their 1Ds in burst mode (8fps-10fps), practically capturing a motion movie, rather than just the moment. When I first jumped into digital photography, I was the same way.

I think this is a good exercise, to take each frame one at a time, as if it were film.

It really depends.

If I'm shooting low-light, handheld, night photogs, my keeper rate plummets. It's gotten as bad as 1:5 or more. Unfortunately, that's what I shoot about 80% of the time. A 055XPROB tripod and 488RC2 head are on its way =)

Being new to DLSR photography, I try to teach myself new things as I go along. I started out with landscape and nature shots as that's what I was most familiar with, then moved on to indoor/portrait shots (still working on this one a bit), and am starting to get into macro (I'll be more into it when I splurge on the 100m f/2.8 macro lens), then from there I have no idea what I'll go onto.

Because of this, my keeper rate is pretty low when I start a new subject, then once they get higher, I move on so it drops again.

I am new to photogrpahy, so I try to shoot for about a 10% keeper rate. I find myself being very critical of the shots that I am taking, but when I look back I am happy with the results.

Very interesting question.

When I was using my EOS 3 and Fuji Velvia 35mm slide my keeper rate was over 60 % because I was meticulous in composing and metering every shot. Developing slides is expensive so I could not afford the "spray and pray" technique.

Now that I have the EOS 40D I am more "wasteful" and my keeper rate has fallen below 50%. The only exception is when I am shooting landscapes with very good lighting conditions. When using flash with my 420EX, I keep about 10%.

Keeper rate is a totally useless measure of camera/lens/photog performace.

A: I could take 3 shots of everything with AEB, and if one of them is good I would have a keeper rate of 33%
B: I could take 1 shot but think about it and take 10 times as long to take that 1 shot, but it would be a keeper and my rate would be 100%

Trouble is, at the end of that I'd still only have 1 photo