Shots per day?

[Mikep996]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I ran across a post in another thread in a discussion about SD cards where someone mentioned that they shot 3-4000 (THOUSAND!) pictures in a day of shooting.  I assumed that was a typo and they meant 3-400 in a day.  But it got me wondering about that.  When I was out yesterday here in Bath (UK), I spent a couple of  hours shooting and took a total of 18 pics in that time.    I cannot see how I could take take 3-400 (let alone thousands) in one day and then review them.  Is that really possible?

OTOH, I can't figure out how great musicians can play the way they do so clearly some people have talent that I cannot comprehend! Apparently, taking hundreds of photos and examining/selecting/processing them is one of those talents!   So...what's a typical shooting volume?  And if it gets into triple digits, how do you efficiently cull that many pics?  The very few times I have taken anywhere close to 100 pics in a day, they are still on the original SD cards in a desk because I couldn't face the workload involved in reviewing them!  Hmmm...maybe the term, "lazy," is rearing its head.  

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Robert Blanko]

Haha, 3000-4000 with an M sounds crazy. I would say, the typical photo rate per day would be 5-20, if I actually use my M10.

Higher rates would rather be expected in sports or wildlife photography. Still remember my excursion in the Pyrenees for taking pictures of bearded vultures. Typically, the vultures show up for about 1 - 2 mins and fly next to the viewpoint. So setting the DSLR frame rate to 10 per second and taking series of few seconds turned out to be a viable option to take a perfect photo because it was very difficult to anticipate the perfect moment. Afterwards of course you had to delete those pictures where the vulture had the eyes closed due to twinkling or where the overall impression was not appealing. Typically, you may quickly make a preselection, but it nevertheless took some time...

Edited August 5, 2020 by Robert Blanko

[Bikie John]

I do a lot of sport and live music photography (mostly using a different system - and when there is any of either to photograph!). Having grown up using film and having no money I got used to rationing a set of 36 across a session. Having long since been running digital I haven't gone mad and will typically shoot around 100 shots from a couple of hours of sport or music, which is quite manageable. A younger friend grew up with digital and big memory cards so he takes loads, more like a thousand at a time. He worked for the local press. His boss, of similar vintage to me, said that the younger guy had a key skill that us oldies don't - he can whizz through his vast selection and pick out the good ones really quickly whereas we tend to pick over each one so it would take us all day.

It's just a different way of doing things and requires (or breeds) different skills.

John

[jankap]

On a holiday tour - mostly guided ones - I take a lot of shots. If I add the duration of the tour in hours, I need the same amount of hours to pp the pictures. Roughly calculated. 

[rent]

I have taken over 1000 shots per day on my M10 many times. I was doing handheld HDR panoramic stitches.

I know, not your typical M10 use case. But with the APO 50/2’s low distortion and across-the-board sharpness, it is quite doable to produce 0.35 gigapixel panos straight in Photoshop.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Culling is easy. Waiting for the stitch even on my late model MacBook Pro usually involves a quick nap.

[Mikep996]

Nice Panorama!  When you say "culling is easy," how do you do it?  Do you pull them all up at full size and carefully examine? Or do you just scroll through and see which ones 'catch' your eye?   I took around 2000 pics on a 10 day African Safari four years ago.  After returning home I glanced through maybe a few hundred over a couple of days and essentially just said the heck with it.    The pics are all still on the SD cards somewhere.  As was mentioned, I think going through hundreds of  pics and quickly determining which to keep is a talent which I do not possess!   I'm OK culling at what I would call the "film level" of picture-taking - where a day of shooting for me is 30-40 pics!

Edited August 6, 2020 by Mikep996

[rent]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

8 hours ago, Mikep996 said:

Nice Panorama!  When you say "culling is easy," how do you do it?  Do you pull them all up at full size and carefully examine? Or do you just scroll through and see which ones 'catch' your eye?   I took around 2000 pics on a 10 day African Safari four years ago.  After returning home I glanced through maybe a few hundred over a couple of days and essentially just said the heck with it.    The pics are all still on the SD cards somewhere.  As was mentioned, I think going through hundreds of  pics and quickly determining which to keep is a talent which I do not possess!   I'm OK culling at what I would call the "film level" of picture-taking - where a day of shooting for me is 30-40 pics!

I usually start with removing the obviously bad ones - the ones with technical errors: missed focus, motion blur due to hand shaking, way over / under exposure, etc. During this process I'll mark a photo with 1-star if I like what I see and will come back to it later.

For panos, a single blurry frame dooms the whole group so the whole group can be quickly discarded. (For something like the pano I posted earlier, I try to shoot at least 5 passes. They usually work out okay - at least one group will be defect-free.) Panos get stitched next, then check for stitching errors, and try different projection, etc.

For daily travel photos, I have some sense of what might be keepers while taking photos, and try to make a mental note of them then go directly to them when culling. There are also some of the 1-stars marked during the first go-around. Those I look at more closely, then go from there onto editing.

I think this is a fairly "standard" workflow, basically a process of elimination. Would be interested in hearing other methodologies.

[John Miranda]

Similarly, I import all images, then launch Photoshop in review mode, and quickly traverse, labeling by pressing 1-5 on the keyboard (or not labeling and just advancing) based on initial reaction.  I can get through hundreds pretty quickly.  Next, I filter on 4+ stars, and examine more closely.  Then 3+ stars.  Typically out of 500 images, I might have ~50 labeled as 3 star, 10-20 as 4 star, and 2-3 images as 5 star.

I've shot 1k shots in a day with a fast DSLR say at at an airshow, but with an M I would struggle to shoot thousands per day without exceptional circumstances.

 

 

[Gobert]

Those 4,000/5,000 was a wedding photographer using his camera as a machine gun. That might be handy for action photography, but weddings...?

 But in my view, having analog roots, it’s far over the top.

When I was doing weddings, I came home with 500/600 Pictures. I cannot remember a dissatisfied customer. Soit, times have changed or I’m getting old. Or both.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Gobert

[LocalHero1953]

I skim through them twice in Lightroom, marking any for deletion with X (for 'discard') then delete all those at the end of each pass. The first pass is to eliminate the obviously wrong ones - missed focus, exposure, whatever. When I take photos, I 'know' what I am trying to achieve with each shot, but typically take several at a time with slightly different settings, angles or focus. The second pass is when I decide which one is successful and delete the rest (if I'm unsure, I will keep a couple for further consideration).

A third, slower pass eliminates those shots which looked like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight just don't work in any sense - e.g. the composition, focus point or DoF should have been different, or I just failed to capture the right expression on a person's face, however many shots I took.

These three passes are likely to reduce the numbers by about 80%.

After this I will start on post processing. This may lead to further deletions, of course.  

Edited August 8, 2020 by LocalHero1953

[PCPix]

1500-2000 a day (on a two day shoot) when doing factory walk abouts - because you really don’t want to have to lug your kit around the whole place again later - nor inconvenience the client with having to go back again for a re-shoot - especially if you’ve flown in to another country for the job. It always seems like too much material but normally edit down to a final set of about 600-700 images which gives the client a substantial image library for future use.

Example here: https://www.paul-close.com/paper

[LocalHero1953]

When you're photographing humans behaving naturally (i.e. not professional models, posing) you're always going to have a high wastage rate.

[Viv]

On a good day, maybe 25 shots.

[erniethemilk]

Depend on where I am and the subject matter in front of me, I can shoot 6 or 600 dependent on the subject matter.

I shot weddings for a few short years and typically shot around 1500 photos over the course of a day, with maybe as many as 800-900 ending up as going to the B&G.

I do find with the M10 I shoot a few doubles to make sure I’ve got what I want in focus whereas with one of my AF Fuji’s I rarely need to. 

[intermediatic]

One shot a day. That’s the zen ideal.

[250swb]

1 hour ago, intermediatic said:

One shot a day. That’s the zen ideal.

With one of my teachers that was the exact number because he only took one sheet of film and often came back with it unexposed.

I still go by the ratio that it's just about possible to average maybe three worthwhile photographs from a roll of 36 with self critical editing, and on a good day maybe shoot three rolls, but often much less. I just don't press the shutter if I'm not excited by something whether it's film or digital. But 'how many' shouldn't concentrate on the number shot but the ability of the photographer to edit their own work, so if anybody said to me they'd shot 4,000 images and had decided they got one good image that ticks every box I'd say that is a good photographer.

[Ko.Fe.]

Before C, in the region where I'm, were weddings with thousand guests. Picture for each of them with just married was expected. It is better to have at least three takes for each. Plus another photos during wedding, party.

Canon DSLRs are in use for it where I'm. Local service, fast and not expensive to swap entire shutter assembly.  

Reviewing is easy with practice. I used to take local events with hundreds of participants with at least ten photos of each. 

[Herr Barnack]

It depends where and what I am photographing.

When I am shooting an event that runs all day, I will end up with 1000 or so images at the end of the day (100-150 shots per hour, depending).

When I am shooting a music festival, I usually end up with about 100 shots per hour. 

We were on vacation in Hawaii for for 14 days and I ended up with a little over 3800 images, which is an average of around 275 per day.

When I went to Mongolia the first time, I was shooting film using an MP and M4-P and shot 30 rolls in two weeks.  A year later, I went back - this time with my first digital camera, an M240.  I ended up with 5400 images in two weeks, or around 385 shots per day.

I shoot different compositions for each scene; I also will vary my aperture, so that I have different options in terms of depth of field to choose from when post processing.  That is how/why I shoot as much as I do. 

My shot totals are not that high, compared to some photographers.  I remember reading that David duChemin routinely makes 100,000 images per year.  I have read other documentary and travel photographers report the same.  This is normal for them, but 100,000 images per year sounds like a lot from where I stand.

I don't care how many shots I make, or how high my daily average is, or how many images I have on my hard drives.  I'm not interested in "bragging rights." 🙄 

The only thing I care about when I'm shooting is to make certain I got the shot I wanted, and that I have a handful of different compositions and aperture/depth of field options to choose from.

 

Edited September 14, 2020 by Herr Barnack

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[jdlaing]

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[mujk]

When travelling on vacation, when shooting some occasion or my three grandsons I may end up with 200-300 images per day on the M10 (and previously the M9). The same applies to wildlife, but then its not with a Leica. Otherwise the number is much smaller, maybe 10-20 per day when out shooting in the neighborhood.

I admit that sorting maybe 1500-2000 images after a trip is a bit of a chore. I use more or less the same method as already mentioned, browsing through them in LR, using ratings (stars) to narrow down the selection and deleting the ones that are misfocused etc. After that I go through the ones I have rated again and narrow down the selection even further. Finally, I make virtual copies of those left, add them to a collection and start editing them. Usually I drop some more at this stage as well. The outcome is maybe 150 to 200 usable images.

I use this same method for pictures of e.g. a party, but for children (and wildlife) the hit ratio is so small that I just browse through all images once, delete all the crappy ones, go back and forth a few times between similar shots and select the very few worth processing (often less than 10 out of 200).