How many keepers do you get, on average?

Following on from this, what do people think of as a "keeper"?

Of my 5500-odd K10D shutter actuations, I have about 35 in a "best of" gallery, where I wouldn't be actually ashamed of the experts here having a look through them, although doubtless they'd be able to find lots of faults.

Then there's lots more that I certainly wouldn't want to actually delete, ranging from goodish snaps upwards. And lots more than that, that I'll probably get around to deleting eventually - I find every time I look through, I bin more that I didn't delete last time.

So what do people think of as "keepers", and what sort of hit rate do you get?

I have 400 keepers total and probably 30-50 of which I think are quite good. The other 350 have a few duplicates, nice shots that are not up to scratch and bits that I've done for fun. Oh, and 26 of them are test chart shots when I was testing my 50-200 and other lenses.

To keep it:

Good shot (well composed, good light, good subject)

Snapshot (I don't take many of these)

Personal interest (many are of something I found interesting but are not really that good a shot)

I always used to think that, for personal work, one off a 36 exposure roll was a good average. For pro work like weddings they all have to be 'keepers' of course. The cost of film and processing make you very disciplined and I'm as guilty as anyone for banging away on digital and the shooting ratio is going to be much higher.

Since moving to digital the total amount of images taken has skyrocketed completely. For example for a 3 week holiday I used to take about 4 to 5 rolls of 36 exposures with me. The last holiday I ended up with about 350 images from which I still have about 220 left which are used for showing the holiday pics to family. During the holiday I review the images on the camera and delete the ones that are obviously crap.

By the way, how do you check the number of shutter activations? I can only see the number of images taken (the file counter) which is now at 3854. I have my DS now since januari 2006.

Other than multiple exposures, aren't they the same if you don't reset it?

I would think so, but when you use a custom white balance setting then the shutter is fired but the counter isn't increased.

Good point. I guess there are a few things that fire the shutter without recording a picture.

On the K10D, there's also a digital, rather than an optical, preview. Which I never use; it seems pointless to me. May as well take the shot, then check it. If you don't, it may not be possible to retake once you've checked.

So the file number will be a bit less than the number of actuations. In my case, not much less though.

The file number on my K10D is over 8500 and I only bought it in July! I did spend three weeks on the continent visiting places like Paris, Munich and Venice in that time though.

I think with time you tend to shoot less images, and keep more.
Way back when, I shot as much as I could afford. These days I can take as many as I want but shoot way less.

Gerri is like "Oh look a deer!" snap, snap, snap....

I'm like "so what, the light sucks" or "so what, the background is blah" or "so what, it's not a top looking specimen"

so my amount of keepers is fairly constant but my amount of throw aways has gone down over time.

When I go back to film I take a lot fewer shots and it'll also tend to be a theme in mind. Last time I took the Z1p (out I got 6 decent (for me!) shots from one 24 exposure roll of B&W which I was quite pleased with: http://www.pbase.com/niblue/blackness

Unfortunately it's quite a palaver getting the shots from the film and onto my computer because my scsi Minolta film scanner doesn't work on Windows XP (or any other recent operating system for that matter) so I have an old NT machine I scan onto the transfer the files onto my main PC for manipulation etc.

I actually keep every shot taken, not because they are all winners but because I never know when I might want part of a particular image for a montage, or even to make a point in a talk.

In the latter case, even a poor shot could be useful if it illustrated a point effectively.

If you have the space to keep all those RAW images it is fine. I have a notebook, all be it with 2 100GB hard disks but the space fills up fast. I've got a 300GB back up drive but always like a total of 3 copies of my data (one on each internal disk and one on the external, which I share with my OH).

One of the reasons I shoot in JPEG.

The reason I don't shoot JPEG. I'll keep everything and shoot a lot more without thinking anywhere near as much.

It must be late or I've had a hard day, but I'm not quite sure what you mean? Sorry if I'm being dim tonight, but can you explain that?

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