Taking too many photos ?

Keith you’re basically talking wildlife . So virtually every shot will be cropped to some degree , it’s worth then taking all those shots as some will just click into place once cropped .
If you were doing landscapes or street then the amount is excessive . Horses for courses
and as bo says above I have lost count of the times I have walked round a corner and there’s a deer or fox or a bird there
 
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Bebop said:
I went out with a spare battery for my 'other' camera that was still sitting at home the other week :rolleyes: That was a short walk. The perils of having more than one camera.
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I have one camera and one battery, problem solved ;)
That doesn't solve the memory card problem though.
 
Biggest problem for me is culling raw files. One day I'm either going to have to go through and delete most of them else buy another external drive. I have a terrible habit of ingesting my raw files to a dated folder, editing and exporting those I want to keep as jpg but never go back to delete the raw files just in case. Thankfully I don’t have the same trigger finger the op has
 
Nostromo said:
I think @TimHughes is right. While there's nothing wrong with taking your camera with you for a walk, I'm not sure this is the best way to get good, stunning or whatever you want to call them, shots. Especially if you are visiting the same places.
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I can appreciate that, but for me, combining walking and photography is what I enjoy. A few miles along a riverbank or round a lake, and you never know what the day will bring. It's just what I love to do. My weakness is shooting at everything and not realising when the situation is never going to return a nice photo (not necessarily a perfect one, I don't crave that)

500 shots in a couple of hours is fine to me if I'm standing there with a great subect in great light and it's a special chance etc, my problem is deleting 400 images on the laptop that never stood a chance of being a nice photo. You can't polish a tvrd as they say, and I need to spot more of the tvrds before I hit the shutter.
 
Crotal Bell said:
I can appreciate that, but for me, combining walking and photography is what I enjoy. A few miles along a riverbank or round a lake, and you never know what the day will bring. It's just what I love to do. My weakness is shooting at everything and not realising when the situation is never going to return a nice photo (not necessarily a perfect one, I don't crave that)

500 shots in a couple of hours is fine to me if I'm standing there with a great subect in great light and it's a special chance etc, my problem is deleting 400 images on the laptop that never stood a chance of being a nice photo. You can't polish a tvrd as they say, and I need to spot more of the tvrds before I hit the shutter.
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Keith this describes what I found. So my solution has been better to enjoy the walk and go back another day with a specific plan to capture a well-composed great shot. But I wouldn't have realised that without the stage of going out and shooting everything in sight :) at that stage 500 was a low shutter count and I'd be happy with 1 keeper haha!
 
Crotal Bell said:
...my problem is deleting 400 images on the laptop that never stood a chance of being a nice photo. You can't polish a tvrd as they say, and I need to spot more of the tvrds before I hit the shutter.
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Photography is all about what you leave out - from framing of shots to culling the junk. You can't be too precious about the photos that don't work out. Kill them without mercy!
 
TimHughes said:
Keith this describes what I found. So my solution has been better to enjoy the walk and go back another day with a specific plan to capture a well-composed great shot. But I wouldn't have realised that without the stage of going out and shooting everything in sight :) at that stage 500 was a low shutter count and I'd be happy with 1 keeper haha!
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Yes Tim, we're on the same page. This is a regular walk and I have certainly learnt a lot about where I need to stand, where I can get good shots etc Yesterday was a mistake, I should have known better. The Heron was in completely the wrong place. A few shots just in case would have been acceptable, not over a hundred !

It wasn't my day, the good spots were quiet, I should have taken my medicine and enjoyed the walk, and not go home with 500 rejects.
Time to learn from all the previous trips and start to get smarter.
 
on some days I will shoot maybe 10.000 photos and I will not look at any of them (someone else takes the memory card and does batch processing) - but that’s mass participation sports events..

Don’t worry too much about it.
 
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Ed Sutton said:
Photography is all about what you leave out - from framing of shots to culling the junk. You can't be too precious about the photos that don't work out. Kill them without mercy!
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I have no issue culling photos if I truly believed they had potential when I pressed the shutter, but I do have an issue with sitting there and culling photos that I should have know better than to take in the first place. I don't mind shooting the long odds and taking a chance, but there was a lot last night that I knew should never have been taken.

It was never a walk that merited 500 images, think I just need to reign it in a bit and be a little smarter ;)
 
Well, I think most of us probably have days like that. We're only human, and you might go out tomorrow and only take five shots. So it averages out. The thing is, although I'm not prolific, I take shots and afterwards wonder why. We all do.
 
ScottT said:
LookDoesnt the G9 have a life expectancy of 200,000?
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No, it has an MTBF of 200,000 hours which means that the probability of it still functioning after 200,000 hours is 37%. I would have thought the inconvenience of having tens of thousands of unwanted images would be a key factor for most people.

Dave
 
Dave Canon said:
I would have thought the inconvenience of having tens of thousands of unwanted images would be a key factor for most people.
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Me too.
I have something like 150,000 images on my disk and that is just too much to deal with in detail. I know roughly what's where but... :tumbleweed:
 
Dave Canon said:
No, it has an MTBF of 200,000 hours which means that the probability of it still functioning after 200,000 hours is 37%. I would have thought the inconvenience of having tens of thousands of unwanted images would be a key factor for most people.

Dave
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That is hard to assess because how many hours is the camera actually on while you're out taking photos. And what if you're in economy mode and the camera sleeps for a lot of your time in the field?

200,000 hours divided by 10 years of use gives you 384 hours per week of use for ten years. But 37% means there's a strong chance of failure before that time anyway based on the MTBF theory? (if I understand it correctly)

Sounds a bit like depreciation and half life calculation.

Based on that, lets say you use it for a 20th of that time per week, now you have 19 hours of photography per week for ten years with an extremely reduced risk of camera failure.

But surely the mechanical element has to make a difference, some people could shoot 1,000 images in 19 hours, others 10, 000.
 
Dave Canon said:
No, it has an MTBF of 200,000 hours which means that the probability of it still functioning after 200,000 hours is 37%. I would have thought the inconvenience of having tens of thousands of unwanted images would be a key factor for most people.

Dave
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Taken from the Image Resource review :-

And there's a new top electronic shutter speed of 1/32,000-second, and the mechanical shutter, which tops out at 1/8,000-second has a rated life of 200,000 cycles, just as in the flagship GH5.
 
Really you don’t need to worry about wearing it out. It’s sports and event photographers who have to give it some consideration, but I don’t loose any sleep over it.

If you come home with 500 shots and 495 get deleted, then so be it.
 
Crotal Bell said:
Taken from the Image Resource review :-

And there's a new top electronic shutter speed of 1/32,000-second, and the mechanical shutter, which tops out at 1/8,000-second has a rated life of 200,000 cycles, just as in the flagship GH5.
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My information came from Canon. None of this should be an issue for a typical photographer anyway.

Dave
 
The mechanical shutter has a very long expected life, and if you intend to keep the camera, there is no reason to worry about it.

All consumer electronics can eventually fail (all do, but different specs last longer), but most good quality modern electronics have have an extremely long life, and if they last the first few months without fault will probably out last most of us (bathtub curve) if not mistreated.
 
Sangoma said:
The mechanical shutter has a very long expected life, and if you intend to keep the camera, there is no reason to worry about it.
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:plus1:


A friend of mine worries about the shutter count on his camera. I've told him not to, as he is more likely to want to buy a new camera before his current camera will need a new shutter. Yeah, shutters fail but in the main, they keep going. Just take a look at some of the shutter counts on cameras offered for sale by used traders, 1 million clicks isn't unheard of.

I had a 40D, bought it in 2010 I think it was, I often think what the shutter count on that was as it was used heavily (at the time) for HDR, so any given image I produced was usually at least 3 images, to make one. I took photos prolifically back then too, the 40D must've been well over 200,000 clicks. I sold it and I know it is still going.

I have slowed down with my photography now ( I grew out of HDR loooooong ago), I make myself think about an image before I take it. I used to just take photos, with little thought. I don't think I took 1000 images last year, if it was any more, it wasn't by much. My 5Div, bought in 2017, still has less than 10,000 clicks and my recently purchased R7 (Sept 22) still has only 260 clicks on it. That's not because I'm concerned about shutter count though, it's just the way my photography has evolved.

It's horses for courses though, if you enjoy taking photos, fill your boots. (y)
 
Thanks all, I'm a worrier by nature so concerns about camera wear is something that I'm bound to have.

I'll keep taking plenty of photos because I love to do it, but not quite as many as before.

I know I often chase lost causes and it's time to enjoy my photography and be a little bit smarter with it.
 
Tulipone said:
Biggest problem for me is culling raw files. One day I'm either going to have to go through and delete most of them else buy another external drive. I have a terrible habit of ingesting my raw files to a dated folder, editing and exporting those I want to keep as jpg but never go back to delete the raw files just in case. Thankfully I don’t have the same trigger finger the op has
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I have got Lightroom set up to collate any images shot over 1 year ago and that I have not edited/exported into a "Spring clean" smart collection. Which makes them easy to delete, on the basis that if I haven't done anything with them in a year, I'm not likely to again.
 
Craikeybaby said:
I have got Lightroom set up to collate any images shot over 1 year ago and that I have not edited/exported into a "Spring clean" smart collection. Which makes them easy to delete, on the basis that if I haven't done anything with them in a year, I'm not likely to again.
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As I ingest into a dated folder e.g. '20230419 - Wildlife Abbots Ripton - RAW' it would be simple to just delete old folders and I know it would be smart to do so as anything worth editing was exported as a jpg after editing. I just don't 'cos just in case. I guess sooner or later I'll have to...!
 
I guess the key is having that link to be able to know which of the raw files is a "keeper" and which can safely be deleted.
 
I'm somewhat lazy. I keep everything. I value my time more than the modest cost of storage. There have been many occassions where someone has asked me if I'd taken any photos of a particular car in 2009 - and have been able to provide a number of shots of the car in question that may have been binned if I'd been super picky.
 
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Craikeybaby said:
I have got Lightroom set up to collate any images shot over 1 year ago and that I have not edited/exported into a "Spring clean" smart collection. Which makes them easy to delete, on the basis that if I haven't done anything with them in a year, I'm not likely to again.
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I've done that in the past as well (y)
However, on many occasions I have had a quick look through the images before deleting and found some keepers that I missed first time round.
Nowadays I have all my images backed up twice and only delete the really OOF and grossly overexposed images
 
andrewc said:
I'm somewhat lazy. I keep everything. I value my time more than the modest cost of storage. There have been many occassions where someone has asked me if I'd taken any photos of a particular car in 2009 - and have been able to provide a number of shots of the car in question that may have been binned if I'd been super picky.
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I copy the raws on import to Lightroom, so do that too, but don't keep them on my main editing machine.
mstphoto said:
I've done that in the past as well (y)
However, on many occasions I have had a quick look through the images before deleting and found some keepers that I missed first time round.
Nowadays I have all my images backed up twice and only delete the really OOF and grossly overexposed images
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Yes, I do check before deleting too.
 
Crotal Bell said:
200,000 hours divided by 10 years of use gives you 384 hours per week of use for ten years. But 37% means there's a strong chance of failure before that time anyway based on the MTBF theory? (if I understand it correctly)
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Given there's only 168 hours in a week you'd be going some to hit 384 hours per week of use. 200,000 hours doesn't sound a lot but it's almost 23 years of continuous use. There are only 8,760 hours in a full year.

Take my X-T4 with a "shutter life" of 300,000 shots. I use it mainly for motorsport photography so 1,500 to 2,000 images a day isn't unusual at all. If my keeper rate is in the 25-35% range I've had a good day. I'm not really a burst shooter either. I've had it just over a year and put well over 20K clicks on it already. But even at that rate, it will last for 15 years. I'd think technology will have moved on enough for me to have bought a new camera body long before then. It's really nothing to worry about, shoot away. And there's no saying the shutter would fail at 300k. It might do 500k, or 1 million shots.
 
I read about an older guy in Flordia that is very well known but I'm old and memory not so good anymore. He goes into places down there with a small camera and takes photo's to see if there's anything he really wants. If there is he goes back in with a large format camera and tripod and get's only the one's he wants. I should do the same when out and around but shooting a DSLR and carrying it around is no big problem. But I also try to notice thing's I'd like to go back and take photo's of, another trip just to take photo's. Bad part about it is getting the light right. Have an old homestead abut 40 mi from here I love. Problem I've always run into there is I've never got there with a sky that was worth diddly! One of these days if it don't fall down first. Another old homestead about 40+ miles from here took me several trips to get some clouds in the sky but it was worth the effort. Those were the film days on the second one!
 
Craikeybaby said:
I guess the key is having that link to be able to know which of the raw files is a "keeper" and which can safely be deleted.
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I make that decision as soon as I upload to Lightroom. I find it easy to decide and rate image, 4* will be processed and may have competition value, 5* exceptional (I get very few of these) the rest I delete but do mark any I am unsure of as 3*. I would expect to delete an average of half but it depends on the subject. Sport and birds in flight have a lot more deletions. As I back up Raw files to my NAS when uploading to LR and keep for say 3 months, I do have another chance if I changed my mind but never have yet.

Dave
 
Sounds pretty much like my workflow.
 
Crotal Bell said:
Sitting here before bed and contemplating something that's been on my mind lately. So I thought I would share and see what more experienced people think.

I think I'm getting a bit trigger happy, take today for example, a 2 and a half hour stroll and nearly 500 images, of which I have a nice picture of a Robin and a couple of butterflies.

There was a Heron on the other side of the riverbank, I must have taken over a hundred images at various points as it walked the bank. It was never in the right light to be honest, but I kept firing off bursts in the vain hope of getting a good shot. I deleted all of them, because none of them were any good.

Cameras are not cheap. 500 images on a stroll, reacting to whatever I see and firing off bursts. I think I need to be a bit more choosy before I wear out my beloved G9 on pointless subjects?

I realise that as a beginner, practice is important, but I am starting to realise that sometimes, the shot is just not there, and yet I still get drawn into a bad habit of trying to capture nice images when the odds are stacked against me, and I go home to delete 95% of my shots without even considering them, as they are clearly rubbish, (often multiple shots of the same thing) .

Some may say "if you don't take the shot, you'll never know" but surely there's a line where you have to start judging a scenario on it's merits before you burst off a dozen images and wear out the camera only to go home and delete them all ? I bet I'm not the only one whose done this, and I'm starting to get fed up of deleting masses of shots, just because I get tempted to catch things even when it's never going to work out.

Of course it's different if you have gone to a new place for a special day out, when you may be taking new things or have a chance to capture something special. But on a local walk, 500 images and tapping the delete button for 45 minutes back home? This can't be good, I need to be smarter surely?

So my resolution is to be smarter, save the camera, judge the scenario, look at the live view, and consider the light/position etc and think more before just zooming in and firing off another hopeless 20 shots.

Does this all make sense folks? Am I moving forward on the photography learning curve?
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The above is the main reason I went back to medium format film.
I used to photograph everything when I was out with my digi-cam, then go home and deleted the lot.
For one of many reasons (mainly the cost of film) I now only take pictures of things I feel will be merit worthy or memorable.

Whilst I eventually digitize my shots there is generally no more than 24 to work on at a time.
As a hobbyist I find the whole analogue side of things much more interesting and rewarding.

It's worth mentioning I do not do professional work any more where you can probably never have enough pictures of any given subject.
 
Thought if I add to this thread then it stops cluttering things. I'm 6 months into owning an M50 Mark 2 and already at 9k shutter count due to the amount of high speed bursts I do for sport photography, which makes up probably 95% of my camera usage.

If I do fall into the camp of wearing out a shutter before changing a camera is it a trivial and comparatively cheap job to get it renewed or is it only viable on top end cameras?
 
LancsMak said:
Thought if I add to this thread then it stops cluttering things. I'm 6 months into owning an M50 Mark 2 and already at 9k shutter count due to the amount of high speed bursts I do for sport photography, which makes up probably 95% of my camera usage.

If I do fall into the camp of wearing out a shutter before changing a camera is it a trivial and comparatively cheap job to get it renewed or is it only viable on top end cameras?
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I read that it is rated at 100,000 shutter actuations. So at your rate, 5 years......by the time is is likely to fail the camera potentially will be EoL for such repairs.

NB I always understood shutter life was Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) in others words to figure was and average i e. statistical it could fail at any time but most shutters will give at least 100,000 (in your case) but a proportion might/could go to >200,000

IMO stop worrying and just use it, carefully, until something breaks and then decide if any repairs are economically viable compared to a newer body.
 
I remember my first Brownnie. At some point it broke and I simply got another! All this thinking with up to date equipment is wearing out my brain and there's not a lot of that left! :)
 
Depends what you are shooting, if it’s fast moving then the more shots you have, the more likely you are to get a good shot, slow or static you can get away with a lot less
 
Mostly flyball dogs with a bit of agility. I'm sure I'll get a bit more precise with my bursts as I improve. Would love to have a go with an R5 and see how good this animal focus is on a sprinting dog, but that's a different discussion thread!
 
I find it's a fine balance between shooting a mix of bursts and single shots to keep the numbers down ensuring culling is undertaken as quickly as possible and exporting jpg's that reflect what's happening at an event and uploading in a timely manner as live news. Later back at the home office I may save additional raw files that could have future sales potential as reportage or stock, with the remainder being binned. Everyone has their individual way of working.
 
My son still uses my 14 year old Canon EOS 450D, its been used for many air shows, motorsport and football, god knows what the shutter count is, but I bet it far exceeds what Canon say it was designed for. If it packs up then so be it as it doesn't owe me anything, and after all those years of enjoyment we still have all the pictures taken with it to look at.
 
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