When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a certain
amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each shot is
nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get home, I
end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.
Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of photos? What
methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what to throw
out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes through
the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything that isn't
really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the "keepers."
In article <5qir7499h4ugm7osg3t8fuad26a0vkomc9@4ax.com>, Mxsmanic
says...
> When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a certain
> amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each shot is
> nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get home, I
> end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.
>
> Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of photos? What
> methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what to throw
> out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes through
> the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything that isn't
> really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
> rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the "keepers.."
In some cases I have multiple shots of the same subject taken at
different settings. In some other cases I take multiple shots, handheld
with long exposure times, hoping that at least one will be sharp. For
all these cases you only keep the best shot and delete the other ones.
Otherwise, it depends on how good your eye is. Some shots are very
obviousöy non-szarters, easy to sort out.
But it also depends on how many images you want to have in the end and
what you want to have in the end. For instance, you might keep a bad
image if it's the only one of certain subject you have.
--
> When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a certain
> amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each shot is
> nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get home, I
> end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.
>
> Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of photos? What
> methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what to throw
> out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes through
> the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything that isn't
> really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
> rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the "keepers."
"Mxsmanic" <mxsmanic@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5qir7499h4ugm7osg3t8fuad26a0vkomc9@4ax.com...
> When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a
> certain
> amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each shot is
> nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get home,
> I
> end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.
>
> Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of photos?
> What
> methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what to
> throw
> out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes
> through
> the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything that
> isn't
> really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
> rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the
> "keepers."
I use Lightroom and when I have loaded all pictures from a shoot or trip
into Lightroom I will typically go through all pictures once and remove and
delete all that are not up to standard for reasons like not being sharp,
composition, etc. In that process I will look at the other shots I have
taken of similar scenes and remove the ones that are not good.
The I go through all pictures and give them ratings from 1 to 5. I do that
sometimes in one go and at other times I come back after some days or even a
week and continue the rating process. I then delete the ones that are lowest
and not needed. I typically end up with 20-25% when I have completed this
process. Out of the remaining pictures I find that maybe 25% are worth
showing to other people and the others are ones that I can pick out for
later situations and maybe of equal quality, but I don't remove them as I
sometimes come back to the folder and make another picture that I like.
As an example this folder http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/abruzzo_june_2008
contains around 100 photos and on the trip I shot around 2000 in total and
my HD folder contain around 450. At some later point I may clean up and end
up with maybe 200. The reason I do this is to avoids tons of pictures I will
never need or use. I also add keywords in Lightroom to make it easier to
find specific pictures again.
"Alfred Molon" <alfred_molon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.22e810cdf55be5da98bd70@news.supernews.com ...
> By the way Hans, this image
> http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/66422763
>
> Very nice, but why did you go up to ISO1600, with F2.8 and 1/15s? If me,
> I would have shot this with a tripod at ISO 100 and F8.
Because I was on a trip where I didn't bring my tripod. Photography was not
the main purpose of that trip - wedding ;-)
"Hans Kruse" <hans.kruse@mail.tele.dk> wrote in message
news:487e011f$0$90273$14726298@news.sunsite.dk...
>
> Because I was on a trip where I didn't bring my tripod. Photography was
> not the main purpose of that trip - wedding ;-)
>
Perhaps I should have added that iso 1600 is not a big problem with the 5D.
Hans Kruse wrote:
> "Mxsmanic" <mxsmanic@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:5qir7499h4ugm7osg3t8fuad26a0vkomc9@4ax.com...
>> When shooting film I'm constrained by the fact that each shot costs a
>> certain
>> amount of money. When shooting digital, however, the cost of each shot is
>> nearly zero, and the tendency is to shoot and shoot. So when I get home,
>> I
>> end up with 400 shots to sort through, instead of 30 or 40.
>>
>> Is there a methodical way to sort through such large numbers of photos?
>> What
>> methods do you use to weed through what you've shot and decide what to
>> throw
>> out and what to keep? I was thinking maybe of making multiple passes
>> through
>> the photos separated by a day or two, each time removing everything that
>> isn't
>> really worth keeping, but perhaps others have more efficient methods for
>> rapidly getting rid of the bulk of photos and retaining only the
>> "keepers."
>
> I use Lightroom and when I have loaded all pictures from a shoot or trip
> into Lightroom I will typically go through all pictures once and remove and
> delete all that are not up to standard for reasons like not being sharp,
> composition, etc. In that process I will look at the other shots I have
> taken of similar scenes and remove the ones that are not good.
>
> The I go through all pictures and give them ratings from 1 to 5. I do that
> sometimes in one go and at other times I come back after some days or even a
> week and continue the rating process. I then delete the ones that are lowest
> and not needed. I typically end up with 20-25% when I have completed this
> process. Out of the remaining pictures I find that maybe 25% are worth
> showing to other people and the others are ones that I can pick out for
> later situations and maybe of equal quality, but I don't remove them as I
> sometimes come back to the folder and make another picture that I like.
>
> As an example this folder http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/abruzzo_june_2008
> contains around 100 photos and on the trip I shot around 2000 in total and
> my HD folder contain around 450. At some later point I may clean up and end
> up with maybe 200. The reason I do this is to avoids tons of pictures I will
> never need or use. I also add keywords in Lightroom to make it easier to
> find specific pictures again.
I use Lightroom also. Version 1.4.1 is available for 30 day trial, as is
the beta version 2, so you could use them for 60 days one after the other.
I tend to delete mostly in the first pass, especially shots that are
near duplicates, then rename, then rate and delete some more.
Hans- Nice examples of solid work! For my own personals, however, I find
too many similar shots of almost the same mountain. For more variety,
I'd be inclined to add some closer-ins, maybe a few attractive people?
"Alfred Molon" <alfred_molon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.22e810cdf55be5da98bd70@news.supernews.com ...
> By the way Hans, this image
> http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/66422763
>
> Very nice, but why did you go up to ISO1600, with F2.8 and 1/15s? If me,
> I would have shot this with a tripod at ISO 100 and F8.
> --
>
> Alfred Molon
> ------------------------------
Nothing wrong with that lens at full aperture, is there???
"Alfred Molon" <alfred_molon@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.22e810cdf55be5da98bd70@news.supernews.com ...
> By the way Hans, this image
> http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/66422763
>
> Very nice, but why did you go up to ISO1600, with F2.8 and 1/15s? If me,
> I would have shot this with a tripod at ISO 100 and F8.
I would have put it through Photoshop and used "Edit / Transform /
Perspective" and stopped the building from falling away from the viewer.
Drowning in photos 
Linear Mode
