What to do with mediocre images?

[jay_chadney]

I am struggling with the conversion to digital (Canon 10D). When I

bought it, I stalled selling my EOS 3 because I wasn't sure I really

wanted to go all digital. Currently I own the above 2 cameras, 2

classic 70's rangefinders, a 6x6 system, and a 4x5 camera. I also

have an Epson 2450 flatbed and Nikon Coolscan IV scanners. I am

really getting tired of having 2 "35mm" format cameras in my closet,

and having to choose one or the other without any real reason why I

choose one over the other.

Here's my situation: I am an amatuer with 2 shows under my belt. I

shoot everything except studio and weddings.

Let's say I shoot candid shot of my kids and it is good, except one

of them has their eyes closed. I am not going to print it up and put

it in a frame on my desk, but what do I do with it if it is a

digital file?

 

I enjoy looking back at the pictures my parents took of me and my

brother when we were kids. So many of them had terrible lens flare,

were out of focus, taken in poor lighting, etc, but they are photos

in albums, and it is nice to look back on those "good ol' days" I

don't even notice the technical or compositional quality of the

picture.

 

If I continue to shoot film, those mediocre pictures will be there

years from now, either in a box, or at least, in a slide/negative

sheet. If I go digital, then I must back up that mediocre file,

continue to transfer it to another new type of medium when the time

comes, then when my kids want to look at pictures of them as kids,

they have to load up a cd, and sit in front of a computer screen.

Have others used this scenario to convice themselves to go with

digital or against it?

 

This is just one of the digital/film thougths that is keeping me up

at night. If I can get some insight into the thoughts of others, I

can cross one "obstacle" off my list. I don't care if I go film or

go digital, I just feel I have to go something.

Thanks.

[pbizarro]

Poor photos are poor photos, regardless of the capture media. As such, the y should be sent to the trash can. If they however hold sentimental value, then you should keep them.

[vincent_j_m]

If I don't like a pic, I trash it, whether it's a print, neg, slide, or JPEG.

[mark pav]

Jay, I just lost about 500 photos due to some computer problem or another. Either the

disks were really lousy quality or Norton Anti-Virus killed them through some weird

malfunction (that's what Adobe claims).

 

I don't stay up at night worrying about this, but you've made a fair point. I only tend to

print the best of the best that I shoot, and only a very few of those, really. I guess I'll be

storing my images on hard drives and hoping that if anyone wants to see them in the

future they can look at them on the computer and then print the ones they want printed.

 

If you want shots for posterity's sake, but can't stand the thought of keeping the duds,

then you'll just have to take better pictures. ;-) Then you can print the digital files

without wincing at the closed eyes and camera shake.

[Brian]

<P>Jay, I think the film/digital choice has merely opened your eyes to an issue that was always there. There's no general answer. You just have to do what you can to preserve the photos that you want to keep. It's the pace of change of digital storage media that creates a problem.</P><P>We didn't know how well off we were for all those years when we could just keep old photos in a shoebox.</P>

[jean_marc_liotier]

As someone else once put it : the most important tool in a photographer's lab is a trashcan. The more I shoot, the more selective I get. There are two main reasons for this : first is the time spent post-processing (1-5 minutes per kept shot in average) - so I now only keep the really good raw material. Second is that I now understand that it is better to have a tight selection of stunning picture instead of boring the audience to death with hundreds of duds. I make exception for older pictures with nostalgia value - especially from the pre-digital days as I don't have many pictures from that era, but nowadays I ruthlessly edit my selections. Some of my family and friends ask me why I only show the good ones instead of just dumping everything on them... That's because I want to spare them the suffering...

[katherinea]

I remember a story about a highly publicized picture of Bill Clinton meeting Monica

Lewinski, taken while he was meeting and greeting members of the public at a function.

All the digital photographers threw this picture away ritually, as it seemed boring and

unimportant at the time. There was thus only one picture of the meeting as it was taken by

a film photographer who kept all his photos, of course then it made him a bit of money. I

personally am prompted by this story to think it's a good idea to keep all the sentimental

photos at least. After all a DVD of photos doesn't take up more space in a person's home

than a printed roll of film. And you never know what value photos will have to you or

others in the future.

[norman]

How often do you look at your old K-64-slides from the seventies and eighties, compared to your parents old albums? And - how often do you think your children will look at your tens of thousands of digital images, stored on an outdated, forgotten computer, totally out of reach for tomorrows technology?

 

With everyone using digital cameras the total amount of exposed images will increaese by a VERY large number. Just a few of these digital images will ever be looked at in the future, most of them will be forgotten, and in the end deleted.

 

The only lasting memory is images on paper, in albums or in boxes - now and forever.

 

The following image is a scan from just that - an old paper image.<div></div>

[ellis_vener_photography]

Katharine,

That isn't what happened. The story doesn't havethe film vs. digital moral you want to give

it. The Lewinsky photo was made back in 1996. <P>This is a link to the story in full,

written by the photographer who made that photo: <A HREF = http://

www.digitaljournalist.org/issue9807/editorial.htm> http://www.digitaljournalist.org/

issue9807/editorial.htm</a>

[rob_murray]

If you shot a digital pic of your kids and one had their eyes closed, shoot it again till you get it right, then delete the bad ones.

Why not take your old photos and scan them and tweak them in photoshop

and make them look better while your at it.

 

when my kids want to look at pictures of them as kids, they have to load up a cd, and sit in front of a computer screen.

 

Not really. With a card reader just copy your family pics from the computer to your card and get the device from Sandisk that acts like a video display hooked to any TV set for viewing. It kind of replaces the slide projector. Or just print your kid pictures like normal film.

[roger_kallet]

Jay,

 

Say you usually shoot one or two rolls of film at their birthday parties. That would be 72-pictures, good ones and bad ones.

You have the film devloped at Walmart, Walgreens or somewhere. Now you have prints to put away just like your parents did.

 

Enter the Canon 10D--shoot about the same number of pictures and take the the "memory" to Walmat, Walgreens or somewhere and have prints made, just like your parents did long ago. "Album" them or put them in a shoe box. No fuss, no mess, no bother. Different technologies, same end-results.

 

Roger

[jordan2240]

Jay,

 

Roger, above, beat me to it. One of the great myths of the digital age is that you have to treat it so much differently than film. YOU DON'T. Pictures printed directly from your memory card in 4x6 size are quite acceptable and often very good, so you can have exactly the same result you'd get from developing a roll of film. If you then go on to delete the images, you can always scan them from the print should you need additional copies. You basically lose the "negative" then, but how many of those old family photos have the accompanying negatives anyway. Most people just tossed them in the garbage once the prints were made. So print away Jay, and enjoy the fact that you really don't have to print the bad stuff if you don't want to. With film, you have no choice (unless you do your own printing of course).

[conrad_hoffman]

I archive everything. Shoot a card, start the files down the road on CD and rewrite them every few years. Storage space and time just aren't big issues these days unless you shoot tons of raw. It just doesn't show a lot of foresight to delete things, as even though you can't predict the future, you can guarantee change. What's unimportant to you today may become incredibly valuable (to you, anyway) at some point in the future. Even if you don't rewrite the media now and then, you can put the odds in your favor by reading the media test reports, buying quality, and writing slowly. The life of CDs is usually much longer than the FUDsters would have you believe- if you pay attention to the basics, like storage conditions.

[marbing]

The worst thing you should do with a mediocre image is to delete it!

Instead you should learn from them. You will learn more from doing a self-critique of your mistakes than from patting yourself on the back for some accidental and lucky shots that turn out good.

 

When you take the time to look at your less than successful shots, you get the chance to ask yourself: "What could I have done differently?"..."Why didn't this work?"..."How come I didn't get the effect I wanted?" From the answers you get...you will be more mindful the next time you look through the viewfinder and your pictures will improve.

 

Failed shots are too valuable a learning tool to be consigned to the trashcan after only a 1 second squint at your tiny LCD.

 

Even if nobody else ever sees your failures...you SHOULD look at them closely and thoughtfully. It will not only improve your photography but it will give you a benchmark to see how MUCH you have improved over the years (when you look back at your first halting efforts)...but if you have deleted all your mistakes...what will you have to look back at? I also find that developing the ability to critique your own work allows you to better give an opinion on someone else's work and it can allow you to appreciate the great photographs of the past and see why they 'work'.

 

Studying your mistakes will make you a better photographer...deleting them will mean you will continue to head down the same dead ends time and time again because you will never discover WHY some of your shots are good and why some are not.

[yankfan]

My 2 cents...I generally will not throw away a bad image if there is something in it that can be salvaged. You can find a use for bad shots with creative image editing.

[joeb]

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue9807/editorial.htm

 

The link was broken. Interesting commentary.

[Ed_Ingold]

Family pictures are treasured for their content, not the artistic quality. Those moments are gone forever without photographs, so quit obsessing!

[jennifer valencia]

hi Jay,

I agree that mediocre images can be AWESOME when they bring back fond memories! Some of my favorite pictures are of me and my siblings on Grandma's farm, regardless of the technical quality of the pictures.

 

Here's my recommendation: Every year or so, put together a "favorite shots" album. Pick photos of your kids and family that show cute expressions, fun events, AND background clutter. (Because ALSO - I love to look at the 'clutter' in old photos and laugh about the food, drinks, TV style, drapes, toys, etc.) Print them onto archival quality paper with archival quality inks, and store them in an acid and lignin-free album.

 

Let this be your "just for fun" album. And of course, keep backups, and of course, make different albums/copies of your "high quality artistic" photos.

 

But 20 years down the road, I think we'll all still find it easiest and more fun to look at an album of photos. And this way, you'll have them stored w/out need for a digital review!

 

good luck!

Jennifer

[dg1]

I keep everything and it's a big damn mess. One of these days I will sift through my hard drives and cull what I consider artistically successful from the other family snaps, experiments, and so forth. But it's a big job. Maybe when I retire.

 

If I archive to CD then I have to label them and store them. And if the CDs get scratched and unusable I'm SOL, so there should be backup copies. This all takes a lot of time, so my sloppy solution is the computer shoebox equivalent. I've been buying external hard drives as I need them because if they crash there's a better chance of retrieving data than if a CD is trashed and I can transfer masses of images to them quickly and without much thought. I've become much more selective about what I print, but I still keep everything.

 

Actually this is one reason I'm enjoying lately returning to 35mm film. My approach to that is to just get the color print film processed, uncut. That's quite inexpensive. Then when I have the time, I look at them with the light table. The promising frames then make it to the scanner for closer inspection in the prescan and the only images that make it to the computer are ones I really like. Saves quite a bit of disk space. While this is a pain for casual photos, it's actually no more involved than a digital workflow for my personal arty type work. It's just redistributing the effort. The archiving is already done when I store the negatives after I've selected the scans. The camera I am using also prints exposure data between the sprocket holes of the film, which I think is very cool and it relieves me of some of the record keeping. Not as detailed as an exif file but I have aperture, shutter speed, shooting mode, unfortunately not lens focal length.

 

For family photos and such I just bring the film or memory card to the one hour and get 4X6 prints and save the outrageous cost of inkjet ink and paper for prints I'm aesthetically interested in.

[paul -]

"<i>Poor photos are poor photos, regardless of the capture media. As such, the y should be sent to the trash can. If they however hold sentimental value, then you should keep them.</i>"<p>I'm afraid to even think about tossing photos now. I shot "unofficial" pics at a cousin's wedding earlier this year, and it turned out they had no "official" photographer. Just a couple months later, he found out he has terminal brain and lung cancers and may not see his 1st anniversary. A few months ago, nobody would have cared about throwing away the "bad" pics. Now, every last image of him has all the more meaning to the family, regardless of technical perfection or lack thereof. This is just one example of an infinite number of possible, unforeseeable reasons to save the "throw-aways".<p>Digital storage is cheap, and gets cheaper and bigger all the time. Soon, storage will be a non-issue, and modern cataloging software makes finding specific shots a snap.

[anicolao]

I can't believe this subject draws so many "keep it" responses! What I've been telling

everybody since I got my first digital camera years ago is that the great thing about digital

is

that it liberated us from worrying about "waste" with pictures.

 

The great beauty of it is that you can take tons of shots, filter on the camera, and then

filter on the computer. Archive to CDROM or DVD for backup purposes and you're set. I

frequently take 10, 20 or even 100 pictures to get the good capture - especially for

groups of kids, who can be hard to get - why keep the extras?

 

I have over 8000 photos on my computer and not a single one I think is good enough to

upload to photo.net. So it's not like I'm saying delete all your mediocre pictures (I'd have

no photos at all then), but I do think you may as well toss most of them. I guess I keep at

most 50% of my shots, proabably as little as 25% in fact.

 

To my mind, the great beauty of digital, aside from being able to shoot with abandon, is

that I now actually get to see my pictures. They're on my desktop, in my screensaver,

viewable on my TV, e-mailed to my friends, on my phone ... and sure, you can do all this

with religious scanning but it's hard to get a scan that's as good as the digital capture,

while it's easy to get a print that's as good as film print for almost all applications.

 

In summary, for me it's a no-brainer. Digital + deletion all the way - so you can enjoy

taking 100+ photos a day.

 

alex

[leighton]

why is it that digital has made things so new for photography for people? did something change? what's the difference between a shoebox and a computer? you want to keep old phots, you keep them. you want to keep crap photos, you keep them. does it matter where they are? people are so concerned about loss now, and backing up of images, thinking that moving them to another location will make things "safer". there is no difference between your house burning down and all your prints going with it, or your computer crashing or someone's fat ass sits on your back-up disk, and ruins all the horrible images that you made. constant debates over this camera and that...

let's get out there people, take some pics, develop/upload, print them, hang them on your wall and enjoy. it better than worrying whether your gonna have these images for a while and whether they are gonna be around.

[sasi]

I just read this article by coincidence. Apprently burnt CD's don't last that long...

 

http://computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/storage/story/0,10801,107607,00.html

 

With hardcopies of photos, at least we'll have most of the photo left in 20 years... with digital, a slight degradation in the CD/DVD will cause a major loss of data.

What is the solution? I don't know - I for one print 40% of my digital pix, and keep them in an album. Hopefully it will survive longer than my CDs.

[andreas_weber]

> ... did something change?

 

Yes.

 

> what's the difference between a shoebox and a computer?

 

The pictures in the shoebox deteriorate very slowly, but will only get lost completly in an catastrophic event (flood or fire or the like). The picture in the computer need active maintenance to keep for, say, 20 years. And chances are high that in case of a failure everything is lost, completely.

 

Actually, I've seen much more crashed harddrives and unreadable CD/Rs than burnt or flooded houses...

 

Andreas