Photography techniques

[Beekeeper]

Although really just a very amateur photographer, when i have a subject to take a picture of i generally choose my shot quite carefully and take just one picture or maybe three at most from different angles depending on subject matter but, someone i know who is a professional photographer always takes numerous shots of the same thing in the hope that one will turn out ok.

Maybe i am wrong but it seems to me to be a rather poor way of taking pictures, a bit hit and miss if you understand where i am coming from.

Really i just want to know if his way is the normal way for professional photographers to take pictures or is he not the professional he thinks he is?

BK

[Bruce Williams]

Hi BK,

I take almost exclusively macro. I'm not a professional photographer - just a enthusiastic amateur. I take my camera out most days (walking the dog) and take anything from 50 to 200 shots each trip depending mainly on time of year (more in summer less in winter). On a really good day it can be a lot more than 200.

My objective is to come home with as many good photos as possible, so if an insect or spider is prepared to stay put for me I'll take as many pics as I feel I need to to ensure the best chance of finding a good shot when I review the day's work on my PC monitor. In practice this means typically 5 or 6 shots per viewpoint. If it's an unusual insect that I've not seen before I may well take twice that number.

Obviously with hand-held (manually focussed) macro there is a considerable risk of a shot being slightly off critical focus and with the very narrow depth of field this can mean that important features (like the eye for example) may be soft or even out of focus.

For all sorts of reasons (subject movement and focus being the main ones) I usually find (but not always) that one of my 5 or 6 shots is clearly better than the others from the same set. This enough reason for me to continue taking a lot of shots per subject.

To be honest I can't see the point of artificially restricting the number of shots when taking more only increases my chance of getting a special shot......and after all with digital photography they don't cost you anything other than time.

Bruce

[galanthus]

my average amount of pics taken for a 4 hour walk is around 200, like Bruce I will take many of the same subject to make sure I have a good shot somewhere and for variety of poses, light, composition etc. In the age of digital why not ?

Edit, actually it can go up to 300 lol

[Ollie]

Like Bruce I'm just an enthusiastic amateur but I always take lots of shots depending on the subject.

When shooting birds I quite often have the camera on high speed continuous shooting mode which can result in a lot of images. I use one shot AF mode for macro subjects but even then I will take several shots of the same subject from varying distances and angles.

I work on the principle that it's not costing me any more to take five shots than it does one unless you count wear and tear on the camera shutter etc. It's surprising how different the shots can be even when taken from the same angle and distance and I like the luxury of being able to choose which one I keep.

Five or six hundred shots is not uncommon for me in a days shooting and if it's birds in flight I have been known to take over 1800 in a day.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by Beekeeper

Really i just want to know if his way is the normal way for professional photographers to take pictures or is he not the professional he thinks he is?

BK

you cant really generalise - if , like me, a lot of what you shoot is high action (diving sea birds, birds in flight , and also rugby, football, motorbike racing, jet skis etc) then you have no choice but to whack off a lot of shots without chimping the lcd much in between - as that kind of action lends itself to the spray and pray technique relying heavilly on the tracking auto focus, the cameras burst rate and your appreciation of the action - but not giving you much time to think about composition.

During a 90 minuite event its not unusual for me to fill 4 or 5 1GB cards - the only downside being that if you are working editorially you also have to review them quick and pull out the best shots which isnt easy when you have hundreds of similars.

at the other end of the scale landscape photographers like joe cornish , david noton etc who may well be shooting large format film, will spend hours getting the composition right, waiting for the light etc then make maybe 2 or 3 exposures.

at the end of the day taking lots of pictures alone doesnt make you a proffesional - the mark of a true proffesional is knowing which technique is right for which situation - and the real proof of the pudding is a) are his pictures any good, and b) does he sell them regularly. If the answer to these two is yes then it doesnt matter if he took 3 or a 3000 to get there.

[glsammy]

I suppose it's more down to the subject matter than anything else. Landscape shots may well suffice with just a few shots as light levels change, but for wildlife you've got an unreliable model to consider so your best to shoot as many shots as possible before the subject decided to either crawl of fly away.
That's my excuse for the thousands I take anyway.

[pressld2]

I remember reading once that it was not unusual for a National Geographic photographer on assignment to take several thousand frames for a published article that would have no more than 12 pictures in it. I don't think they took quite that many in the days of film but with digital the only cost is the time spent wading through them afterwards.

In the advertising world it is also fairly common to take many hundreds of shots just to get the one image that will be used in the final advert. I believe that they did used to do this in the film days too, on the basis that the film was dirt cheap compared to the hire of the studio, the models, the make-up and wardrobe, etc.

But Pete's dead right, it ultimately depends on the type of photography. As well as his example of landscape photographers, can you imagine a wedding photographer being allowed to take 100 shots of each grouping outside the church? The champagne would be vintage by the time they got to the reception!

I think I still take more than I should as it does take me a long time to edit. For example, from my recent trip to The Farne Islands and Bempton Cliffs I brought home a total of 2637 shots from 3 days. (I took maybe 100 or so more than that which I deleted in camera because I knew the focus had locked on the background). I'm still editing them more than a week after getting home. So far 1850 have been binned and by the time I'm finished I'll have chucked well over 2000 of them.

Incidentally, we all tend to think of digital images as having no cost but that's not quite true. The shutter mechanism on my D300 is rated as good for 150,000 activations. That means I used 1.8% of my shutter's rated lifespan on my trip. I don't know how much it would cost to replace the shutter but I suspect a replacement body would be the way to go. 1.8% of a new Nikon D300 body is £21 - for over 2700 shots that's ridiculously cheap compared to film but not quite "free".

Dave P.

[glsammy]

Originally Posted by pressld2

Incidentally, we all tend to think of digital images as having no cost but that's not quite true. The shutter mechanism on my D300 is rated as good for 150,000 activations. That means I used 1.8% of my shutter's rated lifespan on my trip. I don't know how much it would cost to replace the shutter but I suspect a replacement body would be the way to go. 1.8% of a new Nikon D300 body is £21 - for over 2700 shots that's ridiculously cheap compared to film but not quite "free".

Dave P.

If only we knew how long they will really last! My 20D is still going strong, way past its rated life of 60,000 or whatever it was. I'm well over 150,000 with it so far.
No doubt now I've mentioned how well its done it'll pack up tomorrow.
If it does fail, it's a great excuse to upgrade.

[hel1985]

GLSAMMY just had a flick through some of your flickr pics and i have to say,,there amazing,i thought my pics were good but they R just so crisp.loving the red kite shots.
as most i am also an enthusiastic amiture,i have a 14 megapix opticle zoom kodak that i just got last week that does get some cracking shots but none that good.i am so jelious
very good,keep up the good work.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by pressld2

I remember reading once that it was not unusual for a National Geographic photographer on assignment to take several thousand frames for a published article that would have no more than 12 pictures in it. I don't think they took quite that many in the days of film but with digital the only cost is the time spent wading through them afterwards.

In the advertising world it is also fairly common to take many hundreds of shots just to get the one image that will be used in the final advert. I believe that they did used to do this in the film days too, on the basis that the film was dirt cheap compared to the hire of the studio, the models, the make-up and wardrobe, etc.

.

i think it probably was as common generally for pros and semi pros in the film days , you just couldnt take as many due to the limitations of time reloading film (which is also time with your eye away from the viewfinder) and the fact that even a fast motor drive wast the same as the buffering we have these days

I remember covering a 20/20 cricket final once before i went digital where (using two slr bodies one with a long lens and one wide angle) i spent just over £120 on film and D&P - buying in bulk that equates to arround a fiver for 36 shots , ie 24 rolls - , allowing for some rolls being only partially used before they were rewound (to change iso, or to change from colour to b&W) that equates to between 700 -800 shots. which is a lot , but a fraction of what i take these days with DSLR