machine gun photography?

No, I am not referring to photos of gatling guns or browning 50 calibers. I was

browsing my favorite photo.net forums this AM with visions of Nikon D300s in my

mind (not this Christmas, but maybe Valentine's day depending on the detailed

reviews) when I read a comment on the D300 that indicated with the 14 bit

capture, the person filled up his memory card with "only" 700 photos in just one

morning. I then began to muse on how digital photography has changed my habits.

I do take photographs at a somewhat higher rate than with film, but I rarely

use automated bracketing, and I almost never use other than single frame

settings. I am a pure amateur, of course. I DO engage in "chimping" (just

learned what that meant, thank to this forum) but not to "ooh and aah" but to

check exposure, camera shake, and sometimes focus. I do engage in "instant

gratification" which usually means downloading onto the computer. Post

processing? Certainly, but since I always get my film results scanned along with

development, I PP digital and scanned film about the same (cropping,

straightening). Seven hundred photos in just one morning seems extreme to me.

How about you? And how have your photo methods and habits changed due to digital

(besides the obvious, like the necessity of computers).

 

My wishes for all of you to enjoy the holidays and for a glorious coming year to

enjoy our greatest gift, life on our increasingly fragile but still wonderful Earth.

Depends on what he was taking photos of I guess, but unless it was sports or a disaster in

the making, or assembly line portraits or fashion, it seems extreme to me too.

 

It's easy to take that may photos but difficult to edit them

 

Maybe reporting the number of shots rattled off in a short period time is replacing bragging

about the lens length of your lens as the "measure" of one's photographic manhood?

A small sport team with a 12 person roster times 10 photo each and a keep rate of 30% = 400 photo. The keep rate goes down with multiple frame rate and the photo number goes up. Either use the multi-frame buttom with care or pay for it with long post editing time.

I've shot 3000 images in a day for a few auto rallies. There are about 60 competitors and 7-10 stages. Each competitor wants all the pics of themselves. I do no postprocessing for these kinds of events. If it's out of focus or exposure is way off it gets deleted, I don't even try to fix it. Everything else goes to a web site and the competitors can download whatever they want and edit the pics themselves.

"How about you? And how have your photo methods and habits changed due to digital (besides the obvious, like the necessity of computers)."

 

Kerry, I'm an amateur, too, using digital cameras for 3 years plus. Each year I shoot less and less per. Part of that is due to more confidence from my experience with the kit, part from getting over the ability to shoot, shoot, shoot, at no dollar cost. One day this summer with partners on a photography hike one commented I was shooting a lot less. I replied "I don't take bad pictures anymore".

 

The shootx3 facility and dollar cost analysis had given way to exhaustion parsing through my crap in Lightroom. Like I need and have time for maintaining 10kx'n' crap images.

 

I'm probably now shooting about as much as I did when starting off in film photography in the 60s, which is a lot on its own terms then, but hardly registers as a lot of digital output.

 

This with all due regard for Tommy's and Ellis' good comments above, but also another example of why some amateurs do not need the skills or kit of some kinds of professional photography.

I have.<p/>When I went on a trip over the Summer, I took over 1500 shots over a span of 7 days. Most were shot on just two days. I don't know when I 'll be back there and at the time there were forest fires.<p/>When I got home, many (hundreds) were blurry or just sucked. I was glad I had the memory to take all those. I couldn't have done that with film. Especially in this day and age. Yeah, try getting 45 rolls of film through airport security! I wouldn't even want to try.

I was just pondering this question the other night.

Basically for me I experiment a lot more, try different things. Being basically tightfisted with my money I was always reluctant to do much experimentation for fear of using too much film. Now, not so much.

I've also stopped using light meters.

Kerry

I never ceases to amaze me how many shots people take with digital myself including, but I thought you might like an anecdote from my distant past, I worked for a place called London News Service in the very early 80's and on a Saturday you would cover a First division London soccer game the game would startat 3.00pm but you had to get a decent picture by 3.30 that gave enough time to get the pictures developed and out and on to picture desks in time for the last edition evening papers and of course the Sunday's. Well we had very dour Scotsman as the picture editor who would choose the pics that would go out, well when I first started there I shot two rolls of 20 exposure Tri-X in the half hour I was at the game. Well he was flabbergasted at my extravagance I will always remember his words

"F... me laddie did ye think you were shooting Ben Hur" he was truly aghast at my waste, and when you think that he probably came from the Speed Graphic generation you can understand why.

Now when I read that Sports Illustrated photographers shot 100,000 frames at the super bowl I wonder if we are no longer photographers but tecnicians pressing the button and hoping to get a good shot. I'm not trying to be contentious just food for thought

 

Steve

I experiment more with digital which has led me on some great journeys. But I'm still a single shot at a time shooter most of the time.

 

Steve, what you said about the picture ed made me laugh :)

The great Japanese photographer Araki shot 6000 frames (on film) in one weekend, I believe he had an assistant also shooting. The photos were culled down to 100 for the 100 Flowers 100 Butterflies advertising campaign for a Japanese clothing designer. The reason most people didn't shoot that much with film was the per-frame cost, not the speed at which the camera operated. If film and processing was free after the purchase of a sufficiently expensive camera, it seems logical that people would shoot the same number of frames as they do with digital.

 

In the end, who cares how many frames it took to get a shot except the person stuck wading through them all?

I asked a wedding photographer once what the main advantage was of shooting digital. He said "I will shoot a minimum 500 to 600 photos at a wedding

with digital." I asked him what the main DISadvantage was. He said

"Same answer." bottom line is you can shoot all you want, but sooner or later, you're going to have to sit down in front of that computer and wade through them all.

Steve H,

 

I loved your reply and can relate to it perfectly. My father, now deceased, was born in Scotland, and came to the US as a 12 year old in 1912. A family of very modest means. I can still remember, when I was little, him pulling into a gas (petrol) station and asking for one dollar's worth of gas. Then it bought about 5 gallons, today a teaspoon's worth. Thanks for your answer.

This answer is also for Steve Hughes,. There are times when you end up shooting massive

amounts because of the

project. My partner PJ and I KEPT 16,500 shots during a seven week tour of France

shooting

French Romanesque churches this fall. Thank the photo gods for Adobe Lightroom! But

since we shoot in these dark and very contrasty locations, PJ routinely brackets 3 to 1, I

routinely bracket 5-6 exposures. Shooting long exposures with small apertures means

you

can squeeze the light out of the location, and each pass gives you something different. In

addition, I do HDR quite often as a variation on these shots. It seems extravagant, but

when

you figure we shot 70 churches in 7 weeks, at an average of three hours each, with two

photographers working ... well, it felt ... normal.

I love it.Gowing up as a kid using film ( which is an expensive commodity at age 10) I always had to worry about "wasted" shots. If I only had 24 exposures and chances were a few on the front and end might get lost I had to really think hard about if I actually wanted the shot. And even then I would have to go with the "safe" shot, no expiramenting or a roll could go too fast. Now I can take 24 shots of the same thing trying differnt lighting or exposures or anything I want. No More "wasted" shots that I paid for film for, paid to develop and was disapointed with or wish I would have experiramented more with etc. Now that im a big girl(13 years later) i do things my way! thank you digital!

The number of shots don't matter. The inescapble constant is the total amount of time used up from pushing the shutter button to getting a set of prints good enough for the portfolio. I've found this truly to be the same whether I'm pushing ten frames at a time through a RB-67 or machine gunning with a DSLR.

I often shoot less with digital because once I know I have enough I stop. With film, you are

never sure until you see the negatives and by then you are too late...

I have shot that many doing sports or fashion. Its embarrassing to think I cull through all of those to get just the right shot. I think we have set the bar higher for ourselves. Many of the ones we delete would get used if we shot in film.

 

I shot boxing last year with an old Speed Graphic. What a gas. Taught me a hell of a lesson. I intend to do it at least once every year.

"... Seven hundred photos in just one morning seems extreme to me. How about you? And how have your photo methods and habits changed due to digital (besides the obvious, like the necessity of computers)..."

 

well...I've shot over 400 photos in just one evening....and that was black & white film. And it wasn't a job either. Was in Times Square NYC the first couple times I visitted the place...place is outrageous for photo ops of people! So, 700 in a morning doesn't really sound all that large to me. I will say one thing though about picture count. I actually don't count the amount of pics I take with digital...doesn't matter....with film I needed to know how many rolls I had to process, how many frames I needed to scan (or get someone to print). All of this was time/cost related and I needed to know. With digital, I just download to the computer, look at them in Bridge, ranking them as I go along, and them pulling them into RAW or Photoshop to edit. There is no counting for me really anymore, as it doesn't matter anymore.

 

One habit I have picked up with digital, that I knew about with film, but couldn't justify the expense....although now, I'd do it gladly.....is to shoot in burst mode more often. Two main reasons. I shoot a lot of low light, and the 2nd shot of a burst usually has less movement on my part due to the fact that the camera has settled down more after the physical action of pressing the shutterbutton. And 2, it's amazing how often the second or third shot in a burst (of people) is the better expression on their face. I really can't fully explain the second one...and maybe it's just me...but it does happen.

 

The editting (especially with RAW) in a computer is a godsend! I have much more finite control of bringing out shadow detail and decreasing bright areas. I can do more finely detailed "burning and dodging" (although it's not with the burn and dodge tools) in photoshop that I could ever do in the wet darkroom.........and infinitely easier and faster. Toning is MUCH easier and much more controlled in photoshop than wet processes.

 

It doesn't really matter how MUCH one shoots........it's the ability to edit properly later (and to learn from your mistakes and successes) that really actually matter. Counting frames is about as useful as counting pixels. It don't matter in the end. Only the final picture matters.

Lee

 

I love that idea of using a Speed for boxing, I have used a Rollei with a huge flash for boxing 250th at F11 and using the speed finder try it sometime great fun, of course when I did it it was the best tool for the job. I am amazed how defensive everyone is at their shooting style hey digital is great for experimenting people should do what works for them.

Steve

I once shot 1000pictures in an afternoon of an event. I spent exactly 0minutes looking at them and never really did go through them all. I deleted the whole batch a few months afterwards. Lesson learned: shoot raw. Or film...

 

With a high frame rate (which i dont have, but have used), its easy to get up to a high frame count very quickly.

I think the true sign of a pro is getting the shot in one (or few) shot(s). At least that is a philosophy that applied when I worked in photojournalism - you often only get one shot, if that, so you'd better make it count. I think when one hits the motor drive, one stops truly looking through the viewfinder. Or at least, the kind of photog who regularly hits the drive. Shooting sports even it is often the sign of a shooter who isn't looking at each shot individually. And I think the best sports shots are not made by accident, but rather are intentionally captures of the moment.

"Seven hundred photos in just one morning seems extreme to me. How about you?"

 

It really depends on your style, and what you're shooting. Great birds-in-flight shots typically a lot of wasted shots.

I remember once in Florida, at the gator farm, there were hordes of people and hordes of birds. I'd have my eye to my viewfinder trying to compose a shot and kept hearing this machine gun shutter sound off to my right. Thinking I was missing some great action I'd look up and around, and see nothing but this guy looking at the back of his lcd on his Mark IIn. This went on for a while, and I finally took my shot (two frames), and then decided to watch this guy to see what he was seeing that I wasn't. Turns out he was shooting a heron up in a tree that was about as active as a plastic flamingo. I mean this thing was absolutely motionless!

 

Good gawd, I can only imagine the tedium afterwards of having to sift through dozens and dozens of virtually identical images of this bird, and probably at 100% magnification as that would probably be the only way to spot any subtle differences if there even were any. I can understand firing off a small burst if you don't have a steady tripod, or if the bird is moving, but this was just absurd. Maybe he had his reasons for doing it, but I couldn't figure it out.

 

I have to wonder, for the majority of machine gunners, if they went out with only a 256MB card in their camera and were thus forced to think, consider, and take their time before pressing the shutter button (waiting for the decisive moment in other words) if their success rate would actually go up or down. Not quite as extreme as Jim Brandenburg's one shot per day, but if nothing else, it would make for a good training exercise. I suspect the success rate might go down at first, but would eventually improve with an overall higher quality of photos.