Taking photos

Do you get carried away taking photos

I promised myself that I wanted more productive photography when I got my Canon 50D, but last night I it seems that I got carried away again. The only reason why I am asking, is because I am stuck behind my desk trying hurriedly to edit all the photos that have passed the grain i.e. going to be burnt to a DVD

Are some of you like that? Or do you think that you are more measured in your photography?

If I can explain myself on what I mean by 'productive' photography, I meant to say that I wanted less photos taken, but more good quality photos, rather than shoot hundreds of photos even if they came up really good.

I was shooting another gig last night, just incase you ask

After upgrading my 400D to 30D and then 40D, I make a point to NOT put it on high speed continuous (5 or 6.5fps depending on the camera) it's too easy to fire off several shots for no reason. Only if I'm shooting something that is moving where I would want to have a higher keeper rate do I do so.

I think there is a difference between taking your time, and taking lots of photos to increase your possibility of more keepers.

The only things that will really help here are discipline, practise and experience.

You need discipline to keep yourself from shooting the "maybe" shots and to try to get "peak action" - the fleeting split second where everything is right.

Practise will help you to guarnatee that the shots you take of peak action will be exposed properly.

Experience will help you know when peak action is hapening or likely to happen.

As Dstanic hinted, just because you have 6.5fps doesnt mean you have to use it.

neilwood32 wrote in post #10159796
The only things that will really help here are discipline, practise and experience.

You need discipline to keep yourself from shooting the "maybe" shots and to try to get "peak action" - the fleeting split second where everything is right.

Practise will help you to guarnatee that the shots you take of peak action will be exposed properly.

Experience will help you know when peak action is hapening or likely to happen.

As Dstanic hinted, just because you have 6.5fps doesnt mean you have to use it.

I have not used continuous shooting for proper use...yet, at the moment, the only use I can find for it, is high speed sporting events, like Tour de France, how I would love to go see that in Paris, and Grand Prix, not that they will allow me with me semi-pro camera inside, lol

Define too many photos? I have been to events where I have shot nearly 500 pics but most of the time most I come back with somewhere around 100 pics. Compared to the film days, that a lot of pics.

gjl711 wrote in post #10159861
Define too many photos? I have been to events where I have shot nearly 500 pics but most of the time most I come back with somewhere around 100 pics. Compared to the film days, that a lot of pics.

Yeah I know that 100 photos is a lot compared to film

What I mean by too much, is that I have too much to edit, maybe I should be trying film for a while to kick start my photographic brain

Why process all of them? Are they all keepers? Maybe a process where you do more up front editing would reduce your post processing work. For example..

When I come back from a big fun shoot, like my trip to Yosemite, I took a total of almost 700 pics over 4 days. Of those 700, 200 got deleted as soon as they hit my hard drive. All the ones that have flaws, missed target, motion blur, wrong settings are gone.

From the remaining 500 I go through all the ones that are very similar and choose 2 or 3 that are the best of those. This culls the number maybe another 100. Of the 400 I only process the ones I plan on sharing or printing. My Yosemite trip yielded 43 pictures. The other unprocessed ones just get backed up but never post processed.

gjl711 wrote in post #10159971
Why process all of them? Are they all keepers? Maybe a process where you do more up front editing would reduce your post processing work. For example..

When I come back from a big fun shoot, like my trip to Yosemite, I took a total of almost 700 pics over 4 days. Of those 700, 200 got deleted as soon as they hit my hard drive. All the ones that have flaws, missed target, motion blur, wrong settings are gone.

From the remaining 500 I go through all the ones that are very similar and choose 2 or 3 that are the best of those. This culls the number maybe another 100. Of the 400 I only process the ones I plan on sharing or printing. My Yosemite trip yielded 43 pictures. The other unprocessed ones just get backed up but never post processed.

Maybe I should think like that, just go through them all, and see which is the best for processing, thanks

400dabuser wrote in post #10159496
Do you get carried away taking photos

No, but I take a lot of photos. It's my camera, and it's my time. I enjoy what I do and it doesn't take away from anything else.

I'm a programmer, and am successful at it. I'm fast and very efficient. My releases are almost always bug free. That same speed and efficiency carries into photography for me. I see lots of things I think I want to photograph, so I do. "Oh, that's beautiful," "Oh wow," and "Oh, look at that!" are things I say often behind my camera as I'm mentally composing a photo and solving how to take it with my camera.

Is that measured? Does it matter?

Are you doing this for business or for you? If for business, I'd probably lean toward less overall photos. Why take more than necessary? Have fun certainly, but be very focussed on what you're doing.

If it's for you, do what comes natural to you! Take photos as per the situation. There are times when you might be focussed on one subject alone, and other times when you're flooded with possibilities.

I was shooting another gig last night, just incase you ask

Digital isn't the same as film. While some things are the same in film and digital, composition for instance, digital allows one to work so much faster than film.

A week or so ago I was at the zoo in DC. It was for a photography class. At one point we were in a building with flying birds. It was lunchtime. This beautiful red bird came out to eat. He would go to the person feeding all of the birds, grab something, and fly to a tree. He was flitting about, getting food, eating, and flitting some more. After he'd eaten enough, he was gone. I took photos of him, handholding my Rebel. While I thought the photos would be okay, I really thought no more of this little fellow until I processed the photos. One photo of him turned out to be one of my best photos ever. If I'd had my old fully manual film SLR, I never would have had this photo.

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for me it depends on the subject and lighting conditions 100%. standing in one place with three different views of three different corners of a track in view, I am just not fast enough to make the changes necessary to be sure of every shot, and will 'blast off' a few shots before I am ready to commit to one setting every time I change the direction I am shooting.
While moving from place to place on a river looking for birds, I might have one custom set up for birds silouetted against the sky, but just a general 'f8 and be there' set up for the tree huggers. The light is never the same from view to view, and even changes as i slide in the current, so again, it's spray and pray time, and I will set up better if time and bird behaviour permits.
sitting at an event, with one perspective and one lighting situation, I shoot maybe 10% as many shots.
using flash, sometimes expressions are indiscernable until you can chimp, so I fire off more shots hoping for smiles and open eyes.
it depends. one thing for sure, with exif data, i learn alot more from my 'extras' than I ever did in the same situations with film.

Depends. For paid shoot I'll err on the side of caution. I'll come back with more than a thousand shots for a wedding for instance.

In my recent trip to Florida, I shot around 1200 shots across 5 days. I was with my wife, and my brother's family including his 2 little kids. I was the official photographer for the trip...so I felt compelled to take many shots. After culling, I ended up with about 300 shots.

nicksan wrote in post #10161005
Depends. For paid shoot I'll err on the side of caution. I'll come back with more than a thousand shots for a wedding for instance.

Paid shoots is a completely different animal. When shooting here at work it's not unusual for me to take way more than I need. For real important stuff that can't be staged I'll even bracket just to make sure one is perfect. Nothing is more embarrassing than having to re-shoot because you missed that perfect shot.

To me it all depends on what I'm shooting, but I am in the practice of taking multiple shots for several different reasons:

If I'm shooting hand-held I will often shoot a burst of two or three shots to give a good chance of having something that doesn't show camera shake

If I'm shooting something in motion I'll fire a short burst when I believe a point of "interest" is being reached to give me choices in processing as to what gives the best outcome

When shooting living things in motion I shoot in short bursts because, besides possible camera movement blur living things can move quickly and be hard to nail.

I often bracket both exposures for high contrast scenes and depth of field/aperture values If I'm not certain of my DOF requirements or what will yield the best results.

I don't think any of these things are new to digital photography, but certainly are more available in the sense that all our cameras have a continuous mode and it is easy and cheap to take advantage of it, whereas in the film days having a high-speed camera was more of a specialty for sports and photojournalist and such.

400dabuser wrote in post #10160107
Maybe I should think like that, just go through them all, and see which is the best for processing, thanks

This is one of the reasons I like Lightroom. The bad ones you can reject (or delete), the good ones you can flag as picks, and the mediocre ones don't flag at all. Or you can give them a star rating if you like.

I just like taking pictures. I even carry my camera around the house and shoot random stuff....
I set a new record for me at the last wedding I photographed. I took 2300 pictures over 8 hours then I deleted 1500 of them to end up with 800 that I processed. Do I regret having taken so many, would the 800 I kept have been better if had only taken 900. No and No.
I shoot all the possibilities and keep the ones that work.
It just so happened that at this wedding I spent a lot of time trying to create something out of nothing.

Normally I have much better subject matter and shoot around 1200 to get 800 keepers.

Yeah I get carried away, my name is MikeR and I am a photoholic..........