Leica M-D / Leica Film: some photos which were never made if we had seen the result instantly.

[Paulus]

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I was thinking about ( and looking at )  some photos I have made. Some were failiures I thought the moment I saw them in the darkroom on contactsheet. Blurry, unsharp, badly lit etc. But someway they sticked to me.

Later it made me realise that I liked them, because they had something special.

 

A "wrong " photo being right after a period of rest.

 

Maybe there is some truth in the thought, that sometimes it's just better to wait a while to see what you have made. You can view the image with a different, maybe not so biased eye, than the instand you made it and because it was not "right" : change focus, lightning and or shutterspeed and spoil the feeling...

 

How many of us have these photos and want to share this thought?

[ramarren]

I usually look at the photos I've made as soon as possible, and sometimes mark a few I'm interested in. But I almost never process them immediately ... I go back to them a day, a week, several months or years later. Then I see them differently and sometimes my first picks are not what I picked the first time at all.

 

It has to be a very strong image for me to see it, immediately know it's the right one, pick and process it on the spot.

Edited August 9, 2016 by ramarren

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[edwardkaraa]

I can only speak for myself. I know for a fact that I have missed good moments while I was reviewing the previous shot on the LCD, and also I have deleted too many shots in camera because they were not well exposed or not perfectly focused just to realize later on they had better timing and were generally more interesting than what I shot thereafter.

 

For this reason, my auto image review is currently set to off, and I do not delete any shots in camera anymore.

Edited August 9, 2016 by edwardkaraa

[ralphh]

I brutally delete at the PC, but I never delete in camera. I'm normally just checking whether or not I need to adjust exposure when I look at the LCD, though sometimes it gets tempting to check focus and then I miss shots while chimping

 

At the PC, I am on the lookout for happy accidents and don't nessarily consider a photo ruined if it's a. It out of focus or has motion blur - if it has emotion that's more important. Perhaps it's because I'm still learning, but if I look back at old work from before I was such a brutal deleter, it's all just bloody aweful, so I don't believe I'll find any hidden gems in my current work in years to come if I keep it all!

Edited August 10, 2016 by ralphh

[samwells]

Oh, I do this frequently - particularly with film; I have negatives dating back to my time at art school more than forty years ago, and I still discover ones which I'd ignored at the time. Even with digital, I often don't download the images for several days, sometimes weeks…it's that old Keatsian thing of 'emotion recollected in tranquility'.

[A Almulla]

I'm normally just checking whether or not I need to adjust exposure when I look at the LCD

 

 

I'm in the same boat.

 

The only reason I need to chimp would be to check the histogram but beyond that its all about capturing. I have images captured a few years ago that I still haven't had time to go back and adjust as needed.

[brill64]

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the problem with storing drawers of negatives & transparencies is that they are cellulose & potentially flammable. the problem with storing endless digital files is that they take up terrabytes of space & over time the drives can break down or become so outdated as to be unusable. personally i don't trust clouds either. such a dilemma but it's all real treasure to me & i end up storing it all anyway.

[AlanJW]

I go back to my digital files (which includes many that were scanned from film with some 50 years old) on a rainy day and tinker with them.   I'm so much more adept at digital processing now than I was was I first started to scan (well before I had a digital camera) that there is almost always something that can be improved.  Sometimes I just look at what appears ot be a dark frame, and there is actually some interesting detail that can be brought out.   It is always a pleasant discovery, and I consider this discovery of old stuff great fun and important to me.  But I don't think it has that much to do with having or not having a review screen.   For forty years I didn't have one.  For ten or fifteen I have.  The batting average is not very different.  (I also never delete in camera; you never know what you can find later).

[earleygallery]

I guess having always been a film photographer and still using film a lot, I tend to use the digital cameras the same way - infrequent chimping and I don't delete files until after I've downloaded the images at home and even then I tend to only removed the completely duff shots (accidental shot of the ground etc).