Leftover thriftiness from you film days?

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 13:22:15 GMT, Gary Edstrom wrote:
: On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:50:21 -0800 (PST), Scott W
: wrote:
:
: I do the same thing. I have very few photos of the house I grew up in
: and very few of the inside of my grandparents houses. So I take a lot
: of photos of both our house and my parents, and friends for that
: matter. I also would have liked some photos of the old beater cars my
: parents use to own.
:
: I like to do wide angle shots like this one.
: http://www.pbase.com/konascott/image/91972678/original
: Sort of give a feel for the whole area at once.
:
: Scott
:
: I recently finished scanning every single transparency in both my
: father's and my own slide collections: Over 7,000 of them. Among my
: father's slides sides was this little gem:
:
: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cadillac_1948.jpg
:
: It was his 1948 Cadillac. The picture was taken in May 1952. He did
: not keep the car for very long as he didn't like the way it drove. I
: would only have been 3 years old at the time. I think I have some very
: faint memories of the car. The slide took a little bit of restoration
: work because the magenta layer had faded so badly.

I still think the '48 and '49 Cadillacs were some of the prettiest cars this
side of a Duesenberg. To Hell with how they drove!

Bob

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:18:35 -0500, Robert Coe wrote in
:

Which brings up another of my pet slogans. To most contributors to this
newsgroup, I'm just restating the obvious, but I'll say it anyway: A good
picture doesn't look better when displayed with other, poorer pictures. It
looks better when displayed with other good pictures.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I tend to think a good picture looks
good no matter what's around it, and might look even a bit better among
not such good pictures.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)

In article , Chris Malcolm
wrote:

If your photographic experience was evident in the quality of your
posts you wouldn't have to keep telling people about it.

The experience should be evident. I only mention it when asked "what
give you the authority" type questions.

On Jan 21, 9:38*pm, "Juan Moore Beer" wrote:
In my film days, I would try not to waste too many shots, possibly because
of the extra time and expense for developing.

I was more careful with colour but did my own B&W processing with bulk
film refills.

I find myself still not taking as many shots as I could, even though I can
take a quick look at them on the LCD and zap them in an instant. *This
weekend, I was traveling a few hours north, and had an extra three or four
hours to kill. *I found some nice scenery, but still only took about a
dozen pictures, most of which I will keep. *There were only a few "shots"
I regret not taking, and that was only because it was too darn cold for me
to get out of the car again ;-)

Do you take more pictures than you would have with film, or is the
restraint more based on quality than cost?

I definitely take more photographs using digital than I ever did with
film, but there was a long changeover period where I took the best
shots on slide because the digital could not compete on quality. I
also found the shutter lag of the earlier digicams infuriating. Now
that is not an issue, but for a long time I found myself using up all
the remaining "film" on my digital media before transferring it to the
PC.

These days I only shoot onto slide for lecturers who want to give
talks away from an LCD projector.

You can afford to experiment more with compositions and difficult
available light conditions with digital since film is not wasted. I
almost never delete any image that I take unless I am about to run out
of storage space and needs must. You can only see really gross errors
on most LCD displays and some cosmetically bad looking images may
contain the detail you wanted to capture.

Panoramas are much easier with digital than with film prints and a
scalpel (and a bit of a let down using slides).

Regards,
Martin Brown

Robert Coe wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:17:52 -0600, Ron Hunter wrote:
: Robert Coe wrote:
: On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:38:09 -0800, "Juan Moore Beer"
: wrote:
: : In my film days, I would try not to waste too many shots, possibly because
: : of the extra time and expense for developing.
: :
: : I find myself still not taking as many shots as I could, even though I can
: : take a quick look at them on the LCD and zap them in an instant. This
: : weekend, I was traveling a few hours north, and had an extra three or four
: : hours to kill. I found some nice scenery, but still only took about a
: : dozen pictures, most of which I will keep. There were only a few "shots"
: : I regret not taking, and that was only because it was too darn cold for me
: : to get out of the car again ;-)
: :
: : Do you take more pictures than you would have with film, or is the
: : restraint more based on quality than cost?
:
: I expect to be flamed for saying this, because some in this group are such
: purists that they think one should eschew any photo which has not been planned
: in advance and perfectly composed. To show my contempt for that attitude, I'll
: answer before I even read the three or four responses you've already received.
: ;^)
:
: If you're not already a world-class photographer with the best equipment money
: can buy (and maybe even if you are), and if if you throw away fewer than 60%
: of the pictures you take, either you're being insufficiently aggressive in
: culling your images or you're not clicking the shutter enough. As your
: instinct tells you, one of the three principal advantages of digital
: photography is that you don't have to worry about the cost of an individual
: shot. (The other two are that you can see what you're doing as you go and that
: images can be improved or corrected easily.) If you don't exploit that
: advantage, you're handicapping yourself for no good reason.
:
: Especially when photographing children or groups of people, I find that if I
: run off a dozen shots of one scene, at most one or two of them will stand out
: as representing what I was trying to accomplish. If I took fewer shots, it's
: inevitable that I'd miss those best shots a significant percentage of the
: time.
:
: Note that you don't, of course, have to admit that you took (and threw away)
: all those extra shots. You can perfectly well sneer at the idea of taking
: extra shots and assert with a straight face that you never take pictures that
: aren't carefully planned and therefore worth keeping. Unless those to whom you
: feed that crap were at a photo shoot with you, how are they going to know?
: (Don't forget to renumber the images so that none are obviously missing.)
:
: OK, I've had my say. Let the argument begin!
:
: Bob
:
: I certainly don't sneer at taking a lot of shots, but I do feel that
: anyone who discards 60% of his shots may be making a mistake. Sometimes
: that shot I thought wasn't really what I wanted is the only one that
: contained an image of 'Uncle John', who just up and died last week, and
: now I cherish that shot. Keeping that 60% of pictures doesn't cost you
: anything, so why throw them away? With Terabyte HDs going for under
: $300, there is little excuse to discard any image that is clear, and has
: an identifiable subject. I keep 99% of the images I take for the above
: reason.

Trust me when I tell you that I'm not good enough to justify doing as you
suggest. I'm a packrat by nature, and if I throw away 60% of my shots, those
shots deserved their fate. Those that aren't technically or compositionally
deficient are duplicative of other shots that were marginally (or
considerably) better.

What may be getting lost in this discussion is that the only thing that
matters is the result. If I shoot 20 pictures and save one, and you shoot
three pictures and save one, each of us has one picture to show and/or enjoy.
If your picture is at least as good as mine, you can ignore my suggestion to
save more, If it isn't, you might want to consider taking more shots.

(Note that when I say "you", I don't mean *you*, Ron, especially since you
aren't really disputing my original premise. It's a generic "you".) ;^)

Bob

I think the difference is in what is being photographed. If one is
trying to photograph a person (portrait), then keeping only 1 in 20
shots would make sense. However, tossing 40% of your vacation shots
means you either don't know how to compose your shots, and just shoot
haphazardly, and discard the ones you don't like, or you don't like to
see a lot of pictures. I rarely take pictures of people, posed. I like
candids, and most of those I keep. I suppose if I were photographing a
bowl of fruit, I might save only one or two good ones. Photography is
such a varied pursuit it is difficult to understand how other people use
it, and why what they do is right for them, but wouldn't work for me.

John Navas wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 03:19:58 -0600, Ron Hunter
wrote in :

Trying to photograph cats (or children) can be a really frustrating
experience, rather like trying to count chickens. I think chickens are
rather like a living manifestation of 'Brownian movement'.

Or like trying to herd cats.

Yes, rather like 'nailing jelly to a tree'. Grin.

"Mr. Strat" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
In article , Toby
wrote:

The professional photojournalist world was never so discrete, and they
are
much less so now in the digital age.

Who ever said that photojournalists created quality images? Most of
what I see these days is crap.

This depends on your definition of quality.

Toby

And, of course we must include wildlife photographers among those who love
the image/cost ratio of digital.

Toby

"Mr. Strat" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
In article , Toby
wrote:

The professional photojournalist world was never so discrete, and they
are
much less so now in the digital age.

Who ever said that photojournalists created quality images? Most of
what I see these days is crap.

In article ,
Robert Coe wrote:

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:16:04 -0600, nick hull wrote:
: In article ,
: Robert Coe wrote:
:
: If you're not already a world-class photographer with the best equipment
: money
: can buy (and maybe even if you are), and if if you throw away fewer than
: 60%
: of the pictures you take, either you're being insufficiently aggressive
: in
: culling your images or you're not clicking the shutter enough.
:
: I'll second that; 30 years ago I took a lot of underwater pictures (on
: film) and everyone marveled at how good they were. They were good
: because I threw 90% of them away and only kept the best

Which brings up another of my pet slogans. To most contributors to this
newsgroup, I'm just restating the obvious, but I'll say it anyway: A good
picture doesn't look better when displayed with other, poorer pictures. It
looks better when displayed with other good pictures.

I've seen many pictures that looked great thru the viewfinder but crap
on film, the film sees different than the eye

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:41:30 -0600, Ron Hunter
wrote in :

Robert Coe wrote:

Trust me when I tell you that I'm not good enough to justify doing as you
suggest. I'm a packrat by nature, and if I throw away 60% of my shots, those
shots deserved their fate. Those that aren't technically or compositionally
deficient are duplicative of other shots that were marginally (or
considerably) better.

What may be getting lost in this discussion is that the only thing that
matters is the result. If I shoot 20 pictures and save one, and you shoot
three pictures and save one, each of us has one picture to show and/or enjoy.
If your picture is at least as good as mine, you can ignore my suggestion to
save more, If it isn't, you might want to consider taking more shots.

(Note that when I say "you", I don't mean *you*, Ron, especially since you
aren't really disputing my original premise. It's a generic "you".) ;^)

I think the difference is in what is being photographed. If one is
trying to photograph a person (portrait), then keeping only 1 in 20
shots would make sense. However, tossing 40% of your vacation shots
means you either don't know how to compose your shots, and just shoot
haphazardly, and discard the ones you don't like, or you don't like to
see a lot of pictures.

Depends on personal style. I take lots of vacation shots of a given
subject with the intention of only keeping the best one, and take lots
of experimental shots that I know are probably not going to work out.
Labeling that as "haphazardly" or "don't know how to compose" is
judgmental and a bit insulting. What matters is the result. Note how
many trial images Ansel Adams would typically take before the one that
got published and became famous. The best way to learn and to discover
is to take *lots* of images.

I rarely take pictures of people, posed. I like
candids, and most of those I keep. I suppose if I were photographing a
bowl of fruit, I might save only one or two good ones. Photography is
such a varied pursuit it is difficult to understand how other people use
it, and why what they do is right for them, but wouldn't work for me.

Apply that logic to the first part of what you wrote.

--
Best regards,
John Navas
Panasonic DMC-FZ8 (and several others)