Drowning in photos

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
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.

--
Med venlig hilsen/Kind regards,
Hans Kruse www.hanskruse.com, http://hans-kruse.blogspot.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
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0 and E3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site

"Alfred Molon" wrote in message
...
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 ;-)

--
Med venlig hilsen/Kind regards,
Hans Kruse www.hanskruse.com, http://hans-kruse.blogspot.com/

"Hans Kruse" wrote in message
...

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.

--
Med venlig hilsen/Kind regards,
Hans Kruse www.hanskruse.com, http://hans-kruse.blogspot.com/

Hans Kruse wrote:
"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
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?

Thanks for posting.

--
John McWilliams

"Alfred Molon" wrote in message
...
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???

Roy G

"Alfred Molon" wrote in message
...
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.

John.

"John McWilliams" wrote in message
. ..

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?

Thanks, I agree there can be a few that can be seen as too similar.

--
Med venlig hilsen/Kind regards,
Hans Kruse www.hanskruse.com, http://hans-kruse.blogspot.com/

In article , Roy G says...

Nothing wrong with that lens at full aperture, is there???

Impossible to judge this from a small resized image. Also images taken
with the Carl Zeiss 16-80 wide open look good if resized.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0 and E3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site

In article , Roy G says...

Nothing wrong with that lens at full aperture, is there???

Heavy vignetting, see he
http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/66422763/medium

But probably nothing which can't be corrected in post-processing.
--

Alfred Molon
------------------------------
Olympus 50X0, 8080, E3X0, E4X0, E5X0 and E3 forum at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/MyOlympus/
http://myolympus.org/ photo sharing site