1200 photos in 90 mins

[SwissJon]

My wife is a set designer at the local Circus school, and they had their annual show tonight in front of 200 or so people. They asked me to take some photos of them to share with the parents and for future advertising.. They asked me this at 4pm today because their photographer called in sick, last minute and the show was at 8pm.. I've never done anything like this before, but agreed because I wanted the challenge. Anyway, the lighting was difficult, and for the first half of the show I sat in my seat like a good boy, and kept pressing my shutter. It took some time to work out the proper settings.. The show was fast moving but badly lit and I couldn't use a flash, so eventually I landed at 1/125s, F4 at 1600 ISO as being about the best I could get.

Anyway second half I lost my shyness over taking photographs and stood at the front moving about looking for a good angle, climbing on tables and laying on the floor.. By the end, 90 mins total, I'd filled a 16Gb card and 3 4Gb cards and opened the shutter 1192 times..

I'm not sure how well the photos came out, I switched off playback on the display because the battery was taking a beating, but I'm hoping I got a few good shots.. What I do know is that I'm knackered and I enjoyed myself.. I'll have to see if I can get volunteered again! What fun.. (My camera is going to get worn out by the end of the year at this rate! Never mind, that's what I bought it for..)

[Jim Bryant]

Good for you! The more you take, the better chances you have of getting something really good.

[SwissJon]

LoL.. I was wondering why you pros were taking so many photoswhen you were out on shoots before last night.now I know..

I've got a lot of sorting and rejecting to do today!

[jamesev]

Originally Posted by Jim Bryant

Good for you! The more you take, the better chances you have of getting something really good.

really? ok confussed. I thought I read in another thread that once you understand photography you end up going from a usable, say 25% to 75%/80%. Or is this the photog journey?

[SwissJon]

Originally Posted by jamesev

really? ok confussed. I thought I read in another thread that once you understand photography you end up going from a usable, say 25% to 75%/80%. Or is this the photog journey?

I'm not going to claim to understand photography, but the fact is, from my experience last night, if I'd taken fewer shots. I'd have missed something. In places like the circus where I was, (I would say it's part circus, part theatre) there are generally 3 or 4 fast moving things happening at the same time.. Someone on the trapese, someone on the highwire, jugglers, acrobats, unicyclists, all doing something in the ring.. It's not a typical circus where you get 1 person doing something, then another, this is a full on show where the performers come away exhausted. My biggest concern last night was the time that my buffer took to clear, I found that I couldn't press the buton at a crucial time because the photos were still saving from the last bit of action.. I need a faster memory card.

So while I hope to get 50% of my landscape photos to be useable (And don't use 50% of them, they're just of useable quality) I very much doubt that more than 10% of my shots will be useable(Which is still 120 good photos!).. But even so, if I do this often enough, learn how to predict the movements of the performers etc, I don't expect I'll take fewer photos, I expect I'll just end up with a higher percentage of useable ones and a harder job sorting through them. Still 120 good photos is a lot.. They only need 10 or 20 for their publications.

[RichardTaylor]

@ jamesev

It depends on what you are shooting and what gear you have to shoot it with..
From personal experience, and this is just technical & not content wise.

Something relatively easy, subject & light wise then the technical keeper rate is very high - close to 100%

Shooting a concert in available light that is some times pointing straight into the lens then it drops to below 40%, even with a suitable fast lens.- unless you like a lot of flare.

From last week - shooting a moving freighter at sea an hour after sunset (in late autumn) with a 400mm lens that only opens up to F5.6, and shooting at 1/8 sec @ ISO 3200 - the keeper rate dropped to zero for a good technical pic and only one fair pic even with a lot of PPing. Now I know why a 400mm F2.8 lens and shooting at IS 12800 would come in handy at times.


@SwissJon
If you shoot a few more of these events you will know your subject a lot more, and possibly have more suitable lenses so you will get a lot more keepers.

[UlpilotSC]

Originally Posted by jamesev

really? ok confussed. I thought I read in another thread that once you understand photography you end up going from a usable, say 25% to 75%/80%. Or is this the photog journey?

I have found that there's a lot of hypocrisy here. In one post someone says "it's the photographer that makes the shot, not the camera" and all the sheep cheer. Three posts later someone says "I can't believe this Fauxtographer showed up to do a wedding shoot with a canon Rebel!" and all the sheep shake their heads in disgrace, because, after all, it's the camera that takes the picture, right?

I like this board for it's tutorials and critiques, but a lot of it seems to be posturing and advice that change from day to day.

[SwissJon]

Originally Posted by UlpilotSC

I have found that there's a lot of hypocrisy here. In one post someone says "it's the photographer that makes the shot, not the camera" and all the sheep cheer. Three posts later someone says "I can't believe this Fauxtographer showed up to do a wedding shoot with a canon Rebel!" and all the sheep shake their heads in disgrace, because, after all, it's the camera that takes the picture, right?

I like this board for it's tutorials and critiques, but a lot of it seems to be posturing and advice that change from day to day.

Baaaa!!!

Let me think.. Yesterday I photographed a Rose, macro, 1/200s from 5cm in front of the lens. Saturday i photographed a circus in bad lighting and very fast moving subjects, last week I photographed a sunset over water with a nd6 and a 3 stop ND grad filter and a 30s exposure..

Are you really suggesting that people should give the same advice for all those different situations? Because it was definitely me taking the photos, the camera was just collecting images for me, and doing a good job of it too.. But hey, it's a camera, my Dads box brownie is a camera, they must be the same.

[UlpilotSC]

Originally Posted by SwissJon

Let me think.. Yesterday I photographed a Rose, macro, 1/200s from 5cm in front of the lens. Saturday i photographed a circus in bad lighting and very fast moving subjects, last week I photographed a sunset over water with a nd6 and a 3 stop ND grad filter and a 30s exposure..

Are you really suggesting that people should give the same advice for all those different situations? Because it was definitely me taking the photos, the camera was just collecting images for me, and doing a good job of it too.. But hey, it's a camera, my Dads box brownie is a camera, they must be the same.

Now you're just being silly. I was generalizing, you are being overly specific. You can't compare the two.
I did think you were right though on your recent shoot. Shoot as much as you can and chuck the crappy pics. As a lightning photographer, i can say the best pictures are probably the ones you missed getting to take. Theres a difference between shooting a lot because you dont know how to use the camera - and shooting a lot because you have your stuff set right and hope to get that one perfect image.

But I'll probably get banned again any way.

[daft_biker]

Originally Posted by SwissJon

LoL.. I was wondering why you pros were taking so many photoswhen you were out on shoots before last night.now I know..

I've got a lot of sorting and rejecting to do today!

Yesterday I took 3400+ shots at a 10K run....all single shot, no continous shooting or there would be too many duplicates.

...although the weekend before I took over 6000 at a bike race with almost that many competitors(all on a single battery charge, which surprised me as I'd never shot as much before). There were 6 other togs there for the same company....by my calculations that works out as shedloads of pics...approximately

I'm just glad I don't have to do any PP....all shot JPEG on company memory cards and handed back and the end of the race.

Yup, it hurts after...means you were trying. And good luck with the PP