Leftover thriftiness from you film days?

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:58:25 -0600, Allen wrote:
: I'm on your side, Bob. I always took many exposures, especially of
: individuals or groups of people. I have always tried to disguise just
: when I was going to shoot to avoid the stupid grins of the "Say cheese"
: school. It is is especially important to shoot bunches of exposures of
: children. My daughter, who is an artist, inherited this from me and
: consequently I have some wonderful, natural looking pictures of my
: grandchildren. A couple of years ago I decided to scan all my old slides
: and I was surprised at the number of close-to-identical shots I had.
: It's also an absolute necessity if you're trying to get pictures of
: flowers when there is the slightest wind, and also with insects, birds,
: and cats. A case in point: my son, who lives 2000 miles away, is a cat
: person, as are we. At one time we had six of the dear cr eatures and we
: decided we would send our son a picture of us with all of our cats. My
: son-in-law came over and shot 25 exposures; one of the actually
: contained parts of all six cats; the other 24 had at best 5 cats or
: parts of cats.

Your experience definitely strikes a chord with me. My daughter too is a
skilled photographer of children. She has taken countless excellent pictures
of her kids and attributes most of her success to banging away until she gets
what she wants. She says it's not unusual for her to take 300 to 400 pictures
in a half-hour photo shoot, and from the times I've watched her in action, I
believe it. I also take pictures of her kids, obviously, but the best of her
pictures are routinely better than the best of mine, even though I'm far
better equipped. (She uses only a P&S in auto mode and insists that a mother
of three kids under six can't take on the additional weight and complexity of
a DSLR.) So if I weren't already a believer in taking lots of pictures, her
experience would probably convince me.

Bob

"Allen" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
Robert Coe wrote:

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'm on your side, Bob. I always took many exposures, especially of
individuals or groups of people. I have always tried to disguise just when
I was going to shoot to avoid the stupid grins of the "Say cheese" school.
It is is especially important to shoot bunches of exposures of children.
My daughter, who is an artist, inherited this from me and consequently I
have some wonderful, natural looking pictures of my grandchildren. A
couple of years ago I decided to scan all my old slides and I was
surprised at the number of close-to-identical shots I had. It's also an
absolute necessity if you're trying to get pictures of flowers when there
is the slightest wind, and also with insects, birds, and cats. A case in
point: my son, who lives 2000 miles away, is a cat person, as are we. At
one time we had six of the dear cr eatures and we decided we would send
our son a picture of us with all of our cats. My son-in-law came over and
shot 25 exposures; one of the actually contained parts of all six cats;
the other 24 had at best 5 cats or parts of cats.
Allen

Me too, in film days I would very often hesitate when it was obvious the
shot was going to be bad, nevertheless I still threw away many shots.
Experimenting was the worse because the cost of each shot was being
considered, this is why I liked B+W better, I could buy film in 100 foot
rolls and load my own film canisters (I sold off everything a couple of
years ago) and only print the ones I found good enough. Color printing was
just too expensive and involved for me.

I had a small ½ frame camera I liked a lot (still have it), small, fixed
focus and loaded with ASA400 in 36 exposure I could take 72+ pictures before
changing film. I had this camera almost constantly with me. Now with
digital, I don't mind snapping away and don't really care if I throw away
many shots, this is especially true in action sports photography where a
keeper may be one in 4.

Jean

On Jan 21, 4:11*pm, Gary Edstrom wrote:
On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 13:38:09 -0800, "Juan Moore Beer"

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

Before I got my first digital camera, my picture taking days were all
but over.

Digital changed all of that.

One thing that I was always disappointed about was that my father had so
few pictures of the back woods cabin that he grew up in in Michigan. *He
only had 4 B&W pictures that showed the cabin around 1920, and all of
them were from the same side.

I was determined that that was not going to happen with my parent's
house that my mother lived in for over 40 years before she died. *I have
over 1,500 pictures taken inside and out around the house. *All rooms
from all corners, as well as close-ups of many objects in the house.

Sure, they are not all masterpieces! *I wasn't trying to create
masterpieces! *Neither was I trying to create anything to sell. *I was
creating memories.

Sure, I may have gone overboard with the number of pictures of the
house, but nobody in the future should ever be disappointed that I
didn't take more.

And I intend to properly maintain my digital collection, moving them to
new higher density media as appropriate, so that they don't end up with
something obsolete that they can't read. *I currently have about 35,000
digital and scanned images in my collection.

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

In article , Robert Coe
wrote:

The point is that there's apt to be something good in there often enough to
make the exercise worthwhile. If, over time, there never is anything good in
there, then maybe you're photographing the wrong subjects in the wrong light
with the wrong equipment, or whatever, in which case you need to rethink your
approach. But if you're getting good pictures but missing some that you really
wanted, one of the ways to cope is to take more pictures.

Coming from the professional, medium format world, I have learned
discretion.

In article , Gary Edstrom
wrote:

One thing that I was always disappointed about was that my father had so
few pictures of the back woods cabin that he grew up in in Michigan. He
only had 4 B&W pictures that showed the cabin around 1920, and all of
them were from the same side.

I was determined that that was not going to happen with my parent's
house that my mother lived in for over 40 years before she died. I have
over 1,500 pictures taken inside and out around the house. All rooms
from all corners, as well as close-ups of many objects in the house.

i did the same thing, but with 360 degree panoramas. there's simply no
way that would have happened with film.

On Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:19:47 -0800, nospam wrote
in :

In article , Gary Edstrom
wrote:

One thing that I was always disappointed about was that my father had so
few pictures of the back woods cabin that he grew up in in Michigan. He
only had 4 B&W pictures that showed the cabin around 1920, and all of
them were from the same side.

I was determined that that was not going to happen with my parent's
house that my mother lived in for over 40 years before she died. I have
over 1,500 pictures taken inside and out around the house. All rooms
from all corners, as well as close-ups of many objects in the house.

i did the same thing, but with 360 degree panoramas. there's simply no
way that would have happened with film.

Fish eye lens.

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

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.

Nice images, what do you use to stitch?

Jean

On Jan 21, 9:00*pm, "jean" wrote:
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.

Nice images, what do you use to stitch?

Jean

I am using PTGui, it takes just a bit of time to learn to use it but
it works very well and is fast.

Scott

In article , John Navas
wrote:

I was determined that that was not going to happen with my parent's
house that my mother lived in for over 40 years before she died. I have
over 1,500 pictures taken inside and out around the house. All rooms
from all corners, as well as close-ups of many objects in the house.

i did the same thing, but with 360 degree panoramas. there's simply no
way that would have happened with film.

Fish eye lens.

if you don't mind the distortion.

what i created was a full quicktime vr panorama for every room, and
when i have the time, i plan to link them all together so one can
virtually travel throughout the entire house, room to room, zooming in
on any part of the room, as desired.

that simply is impossible with film.

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:00:43 -0500, jean wrote:

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.

Nice images, what do you use to stitch?

Jean

Hugin

--
Neil
reverse ra and delete l
Linux user 335851