Hows this for a keeper rate...!!!!

We get the "whats a good keeper rate" question every now an then......

Will I found this quote on Vincent Laforet's blog about the keeper rate of that Sports Illustrated had for the olympics..........

--So I looked into at what Sports Illustrated shot during the Olympics with their ten staff photographers there - SI shot over 300,000 images of which their staff kept 17,000. One of their editors took that down to 1046 “super selects” and then their director of photography Steve Fine, edited his selection down to 135 images. That means their “best of” turned out to be 0.045% of what they shot.--

From 300K to 135! Either SI photographers REALLY suck, or they will be 135 of the most increadable sports shots ! I wsh they would publish all 135 on the web.

I read an article about National Geographic shooters in Africa. Two photographers shot something like 40,000 images (or so) for a 14 image spread! Too tired to do the math, but that's a heck of a lot of images tossed out.

exactly the way it should be... just look around, and you'll see that people are keeping far more of their shots than they should be, if all they want are the really 'good' ones.

I can understand when you're not a pro, and are paying for the processing and the film, but the best thing that digital brings us is the ability to be more selective without crying about it. Unfortunately, people "misunderstand" and think that the benefit of digital is being able to put all your crappy pictures in your facebook album

Mark1,
Its numbers like this that remind me of
how happy I am I don't shoot with film any more

Ahm...it doesn't work like that, man.
What the heck do you do with 300k shots?
There was that volume as a precaution. High action sports. 135 photos seems reasonable for any organisation. It does not mean that the rest are sub-par. I know that when I do a shoot I have only one go at, I will take an over-abundance of shots. Half of those may be great, but if I need 50, that's what it will come down to, no matter the volume. What I'm getting at is, percentage or 'keeper rate' means nothing in this example.

While I am not doubting the abilities of the SI or NG photographers, almost anyone can luck up on some truly amazing photos when they shoot hundreds of thousands of photos. I feel confident that there wasn't that volume of photos in film only days, although the number of shots taken then might have been huge by the standards of the times.

With digital, I believe that we are seeing more "reckless" photography. In other words, the photographer takes hundreds of photos in a burst because he knows that he will just find the "keeper" later on and trash the rest. There isn't as much of a need to get it right the first time any more.

I say this from the perspective of someone who does this, by the way, although not nearly on this scale.

Ya think maybe their standards are different?

John_B wrote in post #6435300
Mark1,
Its numbers like this that remind me of
how happy I am I don't shoot with film any more

Amen to that brother!

My wife used to do journalism work- she came back from China with thousands of photos on film and used one.

ifonline wrote in post #6435360
There isn't as much of a need to get it right the first time any more.

I don't think journalism can afford to be precious about artistic integrity. Readers don't care how you got the shot, and perhaps more importantly, editors don't care either.

With SI shooting an event, the first thing is to get A shot, any shot good enough to use. Then you try to get the shot & that might mean shooting just before it happens & just after because you can't really predict what's going to happen, like a ref getting in the frame. And there's going to be a lot of trash shots that you have no control over 'cause he zigged when you zagged.

For this shootwhich was just for me 'cause I was bored, I probably deleted 97% because I only had about 1/10 sec to get the shot, but the ones I did get were pretty good & the last one was really worth the time spent.

When I shot editorial & could spend time on a situation that was fairly static, I still shot a lot because, compared to the cost of sending me there, film was cheap & cameras, labs & delivery services were just another opportunity to lose my work if I was stupid enough to let them.
More on that in this:
How do you guys get your IDEAS?

In the same post Vincent was saying on some of the more popular events, there could have been something like 18,000 images of one heat. -- from all the photographers-- With all of them shooting at 10FPS every time something kinda dramatic happened, and then the battle at the finish. I dint think that is to far off with as many photographers as I saw on some of the events.

I use that "shotgun" approach a lot but I don't like to, to much like the "blind squirrel will sometimes find an acorn".

It's just the my lack of "inspiration or artistic insite or whatever" requires that I take the "blind squirrel" approach to photography.

Not only that, beyond proper exposure and crispyness, I haven't even figured out what makes a good image.

When I think about the overall number of clicks on all cameras I have, then notice a small handful of shots I consider truly good, the math is undeniable -- Well under 1/10th of one percent.

milorad wrote in post #6435464
I don't think journalism can afford to be precious about artistic integrity. Readers don't care how you got the shot, and perhaps more importantly, editors don't care either.

That's a good point... I hadn't looked at it like that.

The more erratic something is, the less conservative I am with the shutter button.