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What's your "hit rate" for photographs?

Zenmervolt

Zenmervolt

Elite member
Shots taken to shots that you consider "good"?

I'm just curious what percentage of exposures make it to those great shots we see around here. I'm happy right now if I come out around 100:1. Obviously I need to improve that, and I'm not advocating a "machine gun" technique but I was curious what the rough overall ratio was. Whether I'm much worse than I thought, or maybe not quite as awful. 😛

ZV
 
i guess that really depends on an individual's standards...
some people will put up 30 slightly different images of the same damn thing on photo-sharing sites. for those people, i'd say about 95%.
my camera isn't as good as it could be, so i can't be as nit-picky (on image quality) as i'm sure others here will be. i have to take what i can get, so i'd say somewhere around 8-10% 😉
 
It depends on what I'm shooting; I'm much more considered when playing 'photographer' than I am when I'm shooting snaps of the kids.

When rapid firing snaps of the kids, I'm much less critical and am generally happy with every other or every third shot. When playing the hobby photographer, I'd say 1 in 20 or 30 would be 'usable', 1 in 50-75 is 'good' and 1 in 200+ is something to be proud of.

I retouch (among other things) for a living, and generally am happiest with photos I don't have to touch beyond tiny contrast or curves adjustments. I strongly dislike retouching my own photography, even to the point of disliking sharpening them.
 
Originally posted by: rivan
When rapid firing snaps of the kids, I'm much less critical and am generally happy with every other or every third shot. When playing the hobby photographer, I'd say 1 in 20 or 30 would be 'usable', 1 in 50-75 is 'good' and 1 in 200+ is something to be proud of.
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That's about where I am, a little better on the "good" classification. Makes me feel better. 🙂

It's so easy to expect 80-90% of shots to be good and be disappointed as a result though.

ZV
 
I think it really depends on how you define good, ill go through a whole day and be "happy" with 3 pictures out of 100ish
Im not a shutter gunner
 
I'd say about 5-10 percent at most.

Of course, everyone wants to see everything and for some reason the rapid shutter is so entertaining. Where they sit at the computer and hit next next next to see the animation. Why didn't you just ask me to take video?!
 
When I first started shooting with DSLR and substituting my burst for my brain, I'd say about 5%.


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Now, it highly depends on subject matter.

Quicky snapshots of daughter who won't sit still? 10%

Landscapes? About 85%, assuming I'm not experimenting with difficult metering situations.

Macro - 75%

Sports - 25%

Birds - Maybe 35%

 
About 3% keep rate on average. And even with those keepers, I still have to heavily post-process them in order for the final result to be "upload worthy".
 
I can see if you are trying to show off your best stuff, but 5% of pics when your goal is to just show your family a destination you went to? I think that is ridiculously low.
 
Originally posted by: Jack Ryan
I can see if you are trying to show off your best stuff, but 5% of pics when your goal is to just show your family a destination you went to? I think that is ridiculously low.
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Well I would imagine that most people here would take several thousand pictures on vacation....I have never been able to get any friends/family to look through more than 200. I went to Peru in May and took about 2200 pictures...some I deleted in camera, others deleted when got back since were OOF, or other problems. There's scenic pictures (and panoramics), artistic photos, and pictures of groups.... Plus with "film" being free theres the opportunity to take random pics from buses/trains/while moving that have a very low percentage to turn out.

Edit: I also think that photographers tend to be more critical on themselves and only post the very best...while others are content with slightly blury, OOF, etc shots.
 
depends on what I am shooting and what conditions.

With concert photography i had 10% good 1% print quality on my S3IS but over time it was 30% good 10% print.
THese days with the 40D under new lighting and getting to know camera conditions, i got about 5% good 1% print.

Its all about getting to know the camera.

In portrait I have a 50% good, 10% print.
 
Sometimes really good, sometimes not. For example, I took a lot of photos at two Bar Mitzvahs almost a month apart, the second one two weeks ago. At the first one I camped out next to a hired pro who had an expensive professional setup. I had my little Samsung V3 Digicam 3.2 megapixel. Most of my shots look fine except that the pictures are awful because they are looking expectantly not at my camera but at the professional's! The second Bar Mitzvah's pictures are almost all very good. It was a different situation and although there were profesional camera and video people around, I didn't camp out next to them but roamed around.

Even though my camera has an extremely inaccurate viewfinder (it shows only around 70% (guessing here) of the actual frame taken, I've come to be able to make a pretty good guess about what's going to be included in the shot and my framing very often requires no cropping at all, or is reasonably acceptable without cropping. In any case, I'm probably going to get a DSLR soon which should eliminate my having to guess about framing and will eliminate my 7+ second recycles and often horrible shutter lags.

When I first really got into photography I was bulk loading film and shooting B&W 35mm film and doing my own processing. Before that I was shooting rolls of mostly B&W 2.25". Bulk loading let me take a lot more pictures without worrying about wasting film (penny a shot and evaluate contact sheets of negatives). The nice thing about digital photography is that it doesn't cost anything to take extra shots, so you can just fire away and lessen the chance of missing out on a great shot. Of course you wind up with a lot of shots you don't care for or that are awful. So, percent of good/great shots isn't very important. The main thing is how good the really good ones are.
 
Originally posted by: Jack Ryan
I can see if you are trying to show off your best stuff, but 5% of pics when your goal is to just show your family a destination you went to? I think that is ridiculously low.
Click to expand...

Different ways of working for different needs. There are times when I know I won't get a 2nd chance and that I need to get it on the 1st frame. There are others when I know I need to take into account the human factor and unpredictability and I'll take 10-30 frames just to get 1 shot. And sometimes I don't need to be in the mindset that everything I'm doing needs to be "perfect" or "the best". Key is to be fluid enough to figure out what works where.
 
Originally posted by: virtuamike
Originally posted by: Jack Ryan
I can see if you are trying to show off your best stuff, but 5% of pics when your goal is to just show your family a destination you went to? I think that is ridiculously low.
Click to expand...

Different ways of working for different needs. There are times when I know I won't get a 2nd chance and that I need to get it on the 1st frame. There are others when I know I need to take into account the human factor and unpredictability and I'll take 10-30 frames just to get 1 shot. And sometimes I don't need to be in the mindset that everything I'm doing needs to be "perfect" or "the best". Key is to be fluid enough to figure out what works where.
Click to expand...

Sounds right, and it's more fun that way. There are so many different scenarios in photography. With digital you can afford to snap and discard so a fluid fast changing situation can be shot as fast as you can and survey what you have later. Sometimes I just take one shot because I know the next one isn't apt to be particularly better.
 
10%-15%, for events and such.

But it largely depends on the shooting style. If I'm shooting candids, the above percentage is correct; if I'm shooting posed portraits, the hit rate is notably higher.
 
Photography is my primary income, and I consider myself to be at the very least "adequate" in taking photographs. However, I'm usually only satisfied with 5-10% of my photos.
 
I have several definitions of "good". There's the "good" that is one of my better shots and the "good" that is not one of my best shots but still pleasing to look at. The other issue is that the more I shoot, the better I get, so those levels keep going up. Which means that some of the better photographs from a few years ago aren't that "good" now that I can do better.

I think just under 1% of my photographs make it into the best shots category and maybe 5-10% into the other category. It also depends on what I'm shooting since I only really consider nature shots as something that is good. In any case, here's what I consider my better shots.
 
Originally posted by: dblevitan
I have several definitions of "good". There's the "good" that is one of my better shots and the "good" that is not one of my best shots but still pleasing to look at. The other issue is that the more I shoot, the better I get, so those levels keep going up. Which means that some of the better photographs from a few years ago aren't that "good" now that I can do better.

I think just under 1% of my photographs make it into the best shots category and maybe 5-10% into the other category. It also depends on what I'm shooting since I only really consider nature shots as something that is good. In any case, here's what I consider my better shots.
Click to expand...

With work like that you have a great reason to take trips to beautiful places. Myself, I'm partially color blind. I suppose that shouldn't prevent me from aspiring to take beautiful nature shots, but it does completely dissuade me from painting.
 
Last wedding I did I took about 1200 photos and I delivered about 400.

That's 33%

For landscapes it's a lot less because it takes a lot more work and sometimes multiple visits to a location to get that one awesome shot - even though you may have good ones worth keeping you keep trying for the really really good one.
 
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