keeper percentage waaaay down w/digital

[Sanford]

When I shot slides I could count on three "keepers" per roll

consistantly roll after roll, year after year. Now with digital that

number has droped to about one in sixty not counting the stuff I

delete along the way that never makes it to the computer. My

preferred method now is to shoot at waist level with an Olympus 5060

and I just push the button a lot more often - anytime anything half-

way interesting forms in the viewfinder. Do you find a similar

experience?

[geoffm]

How's this for a theory?

 

With digital, most people take more shots overall (I know I do), but the number of *subjects* we photograph remains the same.

 

Example: I want a nice photo of my puppy dog. With film I fire off maybe six shots and keep the best one - keeper proportion is 1 in 6. With digital I may blaze away and knock off 30 pix. Five of these may be pretty good, but I still only print the best one - keeper proportion has dropped to 1 in 30.

[phoneguy]

Of course it's down...You pop off a lot more frames with digi.

 

Mike

[jimstrutz]

I think it's more than just increased shutter actuations reducing the percentages. I think digital invites nore careless photography. And the result is fewer keepers in an absolute sense, not just fewer in a proportion sense. In other words; I used to keep 1 out of 10, but now I shoot twice as much, and keep 1 out of 50. I'm loosing ground.

[oceanphysics]

I don't think it invites careless photography. It does invite <i>experimental</i> photography. I definitely have fewer keepers as a percentage, but I don't see how that's a bad thing, or why it matters in any way.

[Brian]

<P>When you take pictures as a hobby rather than a business, the percent success rate matters two ways:</P><P> 1) in terms of useful output per time spent, and</P><P> 2) in terms of useful output relative to money spent.</P><P> In the case of digital, (2) is no longer relevant since the per-shot cost is near zero. So it's down to whether you feel you're wasting your time taking a lot of no-good shots. But I agree with the earlier poster that experimentation is enough justification.</P><P>And incidentally I would agree that my rate of "keepers" is down with digital, but probably only by about a factor of 2. I guess it depends a bit on shooting style.</P>

[2yellowdogs]

Are you implying that this is in some way a problem? As others have said, and your own experience should demonstrate, people shoot more with digital because there's no incremental cost. As long as you're getting the shots you're looking for, who cares?

[John Crowe]

I completely agree with OP. Digital photography does not become careless it allows for much more experimentation without dollar cost. Not only do you push yourself to take images that you would not naturally do but once you identify a truly worthwhile subject you can spend the time to experiment with many more compositions.

 

 

My keeper rate per number of exposures taken is way down, but more importantly my keeper rate per time allotment is way up!

 

 

That is the second bonus of digital. I have taken 36 landscape shots, knowing that I am going to keep maybe 2, in as little as 10 minutes while in a similar situation I would invest 2 hours in a roll of 36 film exposures to keep maybe 3. So in 15 minutes I can accomplish what would have taken me 2 hours. This is why I am excited to use my DSLR as a tool to speed up my 4x5 photography. I will be able to quickly find the best compositions and exposures.

 

 

Of course now I spend the rest of the 2 hours going through and adjusting them on the computer! Nothing a faster computer wouldn't help.

[conrad_fischer1]

It is probably a combination of both "careless", perhaps carefree is a better term, and experimental. There is also a better chance of education as you can find out immediately if a technique works out for you. So I say whats the problem. You can either toss the nonkeepers away at absolutely no cost other than your time(and I suppose the dreaded shutter life time uses), or you can keep them all at the miniscule cost of storage so you can go back anytime and figure out just went wrong and how you could do it better. In any case it is a wonderful medium, so keep on shooting!

[niranjn]

The percentage is less relevant (not counting the extra time spent on wasted shots, since you are enjoying shooting anyway) than: (1) is your absolute number of keepers down? and (2) are your digital keepers worse in some way than the ones in your past analog history?

[Brad_]

Eschew the notion of hitting a "keepers" goal and you'll become a better photographer.

[godfrey]

It's simple: With the fact that you can take a bazillion frames free after buying the camera

and storage card, you can either work the camera with diligence and thought, or you can

just keep pushing the shutter release button and hope that something works. Which you

choose depends upon how you like to do photography.

 

I used to shoot a lot of film. I shoot about the same number of exposures with digital,

maybe a little more in some circumstances. I shoot more different things with digital than I

did with film because there is no cost associated, and I can change ISO frame-by-frame to

meet a new situation without having to waste the rest of a roll of film.

 

I don't see my "keeper percentage" as being important ... what I see as important is that

I'm getting more photos that I can use. That all depends on how much thought I put into

the situation before pressing the button.

 

Godfrey

[pjmeade]

What do you call a keeper?

 

When I photograph for myself, I will produce work which can be a record or something more "artistic". I'm going to keep the "records" as long as they are not out of focus or have someone's head in front of the lens. In that sense, the number of keepers has shot up in absolute terms. The proportion of images retained will always be fairly high, I'll just stick them on a disk and look at them.

 

When it comes to more artistic work, as long as I produce something I consider good, I'll be happy. The number of shutter actuations involved doesn't concern me. If I was using film, the chances are that I would seldom try anything quite so experimental. So the number of keepers is significantly up.

 

Of the 300-odd shots I took yesterday, I submitted half a dozen to the press, put one on the RPS website and will probably add 3 or 4 to this web site.

 

Just my way of looking at it.

 

P

[klix]

I agree with Brad -- who cares about % of keepers? That only meant something when there was a cost to shooting each frame.

 

3 out of 36 or 3 out of 90 or 3 out of 3000.

 

The important number is the 3, not the 36, or 90 or 3000.

 

The experimentation is where digital is extremely handy.

 

Example: reversing lenses to get >1:1 magnification is laborious and costly in time, wasted effort and processing costs when shooting film, primarily because the working distance is just about non-existent.

 

With a DSLR, instant feedback and ZERO cost to shoot each frame is just a thing of joy.

 

KL

[edgreene]

Ocean Physics<br><i>I don't think it invites careless photography. It does invite experimental photography. I definitely have fewer keepers as a percentage, but I don't see how that's a bad thing, or why it matters in any way.</i><p>The low percentages may very well not matter <i>if you shoot for yourself</i>. But shooting for money changes things.

[rcyoung]

Think of it this way...the historical trend has always driven the % of keepers down with regards to recording an image, no matter how it was done. Stone carvings ( the Sphinx for example) probably ranked at the top with a near 100% keeper average. Oil paintings have an average of 80-90% keepers. Deguerreotype & glass plate had a very high percentage, but not as high as painting. Sheet film came out and the number dropped. Roll film came along and the percentage dropped even more. Polaroid arrived, and I won't even try to guess how many are tossed for each one kept, but it is a lot. Now digital has come along and the number drops again.

 

All the arguments being offered (pro and con) are right to different degrees. As getting the image became cheaper, and less time consuming, people put in less time making sure everything was perfect, performed more experimental shots, and so the number of keepers goes down.

 

Makes you wonder about what comes next doesn't it? HiDef video with a 12Mpixel resolution and 60 hrs of record time on a holographic data storage card? You go in and pick out the individual frame where no one in the scene blinked, and toss the other 6-8000 frames?

[athinkle]

The only REAL problem with the lower keeper/junk ratio (most of the time) is the increased tedium of having to sift through a thoroughly stuffed memory card to find the good ones. Sorting through 36 slides on a lightbox took time, sorting through 200 thumbs on a screen is just plain irritating sometimes.

[sean de merchant httpw]

My percentage of keepers is down from film, but that is because I delete them rather than keep the neg/tranny. With digital I also shoot a lot of stuff I would never have shot with film like interpretive signs (read them later, shoot now ;o).

 

I also shoot a lot more documentational images that combined with EXIF give me records of the behavior of plants, the behavior of light in certain locales, and etcetera. All these shots contain EXIF shooting dates so these snapshot quality "keepers" provide historical reference material related to photography.

 

Past that, I went digital 5 years ago and my tastes have evolved. I have gone from being happy with 1 in shots to being happy with 1 in 500. But that is more a matter of editorial control.

 

Beyond that, sometimes I shoot junk snapshots that have little or no value to me beyond the fact that taking them exercised my photographic skills.

 

So, in short, I would say no, I do not find a similar experience. Instead, I find a vastly more powerful set of tools available to me and use them to further my own goals. Albeit, when all you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. ;o)

 

enjoy,

 

Sean