Percentage of pic keepers?

[Peter10d]

What percentage of shots taken, do most of you keep, as opposed to deleting?
I probably keep too many, but the true percentage of shots I am pleased with, is likely to be less than 5%.

 

[Ian W]

I'm in the same boat as yourself in that I keep far too many but am actually happy with only 5% if not less.

I am however going to have to be more ruthless with those that I keep as my laptop's hard drive is full already! Looking at investing in 1TB+ of external hard drive to keep me going.

 

[Arkady]

Sounds about right on a normal day out - if for a specific brief and they were controlled studio shots that percentage would be much higher.
I just did a job where the client asked for all images that were taken - even the duff ones - since it was a studio shoot it wasn't a massive drama, though normally I'd have re-jigged things and re-numbered everything so as for it to appear that I'd given them everything when in fact I hadn't...

 

[trencheel303]

For me it is around 75%+.

 

[DavidMartin]

Same here keep far to many. As you've said only a small percentage are ones I'm happy with.

 

[JEmerson]

...normally I'd have re-jigged things and re-numbered everything so as for it to appear that I'd given them everything when in fact I hadn't...

'Rob could've sworn you took more than twelve photos, we were shooting for about three hours'... 'Nah, the camera often makes that silly clicky sound, I've been meaning to send it back to nikon?'



As for keeperslike Arkady said it depends on what your shooting.

 

[bobiscuit]

When I first got my DSLR, I was shooting literally thousands of shots a week. Within the first 4 months I had shot 30,000+

Most were rubbish. And every shot had exposure bracketing (and sometimes all exposures were wrong). I doubt even 5% were keepers.
Then after constantly running out of storage space and never having time to look through them all, I decided to be a lot more selective.

Now I might drive around for a few hours looking for something good to photograph, and I often come home with just one shot - but a good one!
I'd say my success rate now is 50% on a bad day and 95% when I concentrate.
To be fair though, I couldn't have done this at the start. I needed to take those tens of thousands of crap shots before I learned to recognise what's good and what isn't.

 

[neil_g]

normally i take about 600 at an event, usually 400 odd will make it online for buying sometimes more.. that works out to about 67% minimum?

 

[Gordon Scott]

Had a full day out in London last week tripod in hand, took 32 photos and keeping 14... Had a model shoot yesterday with a new model, took about 200 and will keep about 10! I guess it just depends on the situation!

 

[Mike Jackson]

As others have said it depends on what I'm shooting. On a full day out it's probably around 10% now. If I've just got the camera with me and pick it up for the odd shot it can be 100% or 0%.

 

[steve_t]

I'm quite picky and many times gone out and taken none / kept none...

 

[uk_seawolf]

I still keep most of mine good or bad just put them on to a spare exterenal harddrive.
But being disabled there are many weeks when I can't get out, then I have time on hands so I play in photoshop for hours converting them into all sorts of things.
Plus I can see if I am improving in my skills (if any:|)
I take pictures for fun only, but I do understand those who are professional just get rid of rubish which are probably better that mine
We all take what we want out of our camera
Barry

 

[Kaouthia]

As others have said it depends on what I'm shooting.

On a product shoot, I could take 3-10 images of a product and keep one. On a shoot with a model, I could easily bang away 500 or more photos in a day to get 5-10 (I may have more keepers, but I only want the best 3-5 - nobody wants to look at a portfolio with 500 pictures of the same subject, no matter how good the images are).

 

[JohnD76]

I keep loads and therefore have a rediculously large library. Any shots that are just plain naff ar marked as rejected in LR and any ones I really like are flagged. I then go through the flagged ones and assign ratings to files.

But I take and keep loads of files.

Ultimately, we are looking at 5% that I am really happy with on average, but I am very fussy.

 

[AliB]

As Rob says, it depends what I'm shooting.

On a wedding I might end up with about 30%. Of the images taken on the day though the phases of the day have different keeper rates. Bridal prep probably has 80% keeper rate but 20% of that will make the album. Bride and groom portraits probably has the lowest keeper rate because I will take loads more looking for just the right expressions.

I have a model shoot on Wednesday and I'll be looking for about 20 keepers from the morning and about 10-20 from a studio session in the afternoon. If I get 30-40 top notch images from a day than I'll be happy (That will work out at just over £10 per image! yikes!) But I want those images for marketing so it will hopefully be worth the investment in a pro model, MUA and studio.

 

[wegotitugetit]

mine has been creeping up

i was only around 30 % now it is more like 75 - 80 %

if you keep 10 % of your images your doing well or so the pros say lol just a saying at our local club

 

[mrtoad]

5-10% sounds fair
i tend to keep a lot in the slush fund till i have exhausted all possible use
its like keeping old bits of wood in the garage just in case...totally useless

 

[Big_Ham]

Depends on what I'm shooting. On average around half get deleted in camera, then I bin about another fifth or so on the computer because they don't cut it at full resolution.

 

[martyp]

I try and limit myself and make some thought process go behind the shot rather than taking on the 'spray and pray' approach.

On a normal shoot I'd keep probably keep all my photographs and delete the odd duplicate that crops in. Today I shot 29 photographs and would consider 8 of them to be what I was looking for, the rest I learn from and try out various filters/crops etc.

 

[trencheel303]

When I first got my DSLR, I was shooting literally thousands of shots a week. Within the first 4 months I had shot 30,000+

Most were rubbish. And every shot had exposure bracketing (and sometimes all exposures were wrong). I doubt even 5% were keepers.
Then after constantly running out of storage space and never having time to look through them all, I decided to be a lot more selective.

Now I might drive around for a few hours looking for something good to photograph, and I often come home with just one shot - but a good one!
I'd say my success rate now is 50% on a bad day and 95% when I concentrate.
To be fair though, I couldn't have done this at the start. I needed to take those tens of thousands of crap shots before I learned to recognise what's good and what isn't.

I agree with this. I'm also very frugal about what I take because I don't like post processing more than I have to, so if something is crap on camera while I'm reviewing it, it gets deleted there and then.

I have a mate who shoots almost constantly on bracketed, not only that but he takes three million photographs of the same thing from slightly different angles - it drives me absolutely mental to think of how many shutter actuations he is wasting by just not being a bit more thoughtful!