Digital overload ?

[krötenblender]

I don't know, why there seems to be so much coquetry about taking only 3 pictures on a nice day or ten on a two weeks vacation here on RFF.

With film I'm also not so lavishly. Currently I'm on vacation and I have just exposed three rolls 120 in two weeks, but thousands of digitals. And I don't feel bad about it... My Leica has a 64GB card in it, and I have no problem to fill this card. My other two digital cameras on this tour have also 64GB and 32GB respectively. I shoot like no tomorrow. To hell with it... These are memories I don't want to lose. There so many visual impressions that I can't process in realtime, so I keep them for later, when my brain has free capacities.

This amount of shooting needs some work afterwards, of course. I tend to sit up to 5 hours at night in front of the screen and throw away the garbage (most of it...), tag them extensively, rename and then reducing hundreds of pictures to 10-50 for a travel blog I write. Later, in my long term storage I reduce this sometimes further. But also sometimes, I just let a random slideshow run over the whole image library and the I often discover pictures, that bring up good memories, or that I find suddenly very interesting and I start editing them, move them into the permanent selection while I remove others.

This all needs good data management behind the scenes, but I have that and discipline for the selection work. There is no shame in shooting hundreds of pictures and fill terabytes of disk space. If you do this mindless, then it may be shame from a photography point of view. But even then, most of us are hobbyists...

Yes, there is pretty much garbage in my pictures, but when I shoot a 1000 pictures and for the long term I have 1% keepers, that is better than shoot 10 pictures and have 50% keepers... (nobody has 50%, right?)

So no, I don't think, there is a digital overload. It's more about how "stuffed" you are with visual impressions otherwise and what personal preferences and priorities one has.

 

[JP Owens]

I've never been able to nail down exactly what relationship resolution had to potential picture size. I understand the math perfectly. My experience, though, is that the issue is much more complicated.

I printed 24 inch wide photos regularly with a Canon D30, a 3 mp camera, when they first came out. I was using Genuine Fractals to upsize them, but even close up they look great.

When the Panasonic GH3 first came out I was at an introduction where they were showing 5 foot wide prints from its 16MP M4/3 sensor that were beautiful, sharp, with great gradation, etc.

In my experience, at least, the math and the practical results have never completely jibed.

I am sure there is a sweet spot somewhere, though, between file size and print size, which is important if bloat is a concern.

 

[BillBingham2]

Just an idea

Just an idea

I just can't shoot a keeper with digital.

The best thing is about digital, it's almost free to get better. All it takes is some electricity to charge your batteries and run you computer.

The approach stays the same, be it film, instant, digital, I recommend two different paths.

First find pictures you like of subjects you want to shoot. See what you like about them, angle, shadows, composition, exposure, depth of field, sharpness, colors, etc. Make a long list and then pick three aspects to focus on for a couple of weeks. Then hope over to the second path.

Here you look at the pictures you've taken and see what you like about them. Each one, one at a time, full screen, full frame. Review, review, review! Look for the aspects that you were looking to improve and decided if you are happy with your efforts. Think about how you can improve those aspects and go out and shoot another weeks worth. Repeat until you are happy with the results for those three aspect.

Then go back and pick another three aspects from your list and shoot another week. Now you review the results for six aspects (no more) and see how you are doing. Think about what it takes to make improvements and shoot some more. Rinse and repeat as necessary (only rinse if you are using real film) one you have that six, pick another three and do the nine.......

I've always shot fewer frames than more, but I find myself shooting more with digital, but I still think before I shot. Perhaps that's because my iPhone only has 16GB......

Don't try and do everything all at once, small steps, and be critical with your reviews. You'll get better, time and concentration helps.

Ask folks here for help, lots of great people hang out here and are happy to help.

B2 (;->

 

[xenohip]

The marginal cost of a digital photo is essentially zero, except maybe for shutter wear.

This opens up a possible approach to photography that, as far as I know, hasn't really been exploited. More or less what we do, but taken to the logical (inevitable?) conclusion...

In brief: each "image" or better to say "photographic opportunity" would be shot as dozens if not hundreds of frames, or in effect a short movie; computer algorithms would crunch all the data at a later time; a human operator would be presented with 5 or so options to choose from; and the selected one or few would be the final photograph(s), for each "image" or "photographic opportunity".

For example, with static scenes, why not do exposure bracketing to 1/10 EV, focus bracketing to 1mm, etc.

For portraits, if a camera can do face/eye detection on the fly then surely the computer in the studio/home can do it even better and select the best focused portrait from a focus bracket sweep (down to the 1mm).

It shouldn't be difficult to write an algorithm that takes as input a series of exposure-bracketed images, analyzes histograms for each RAW file and applies a generally sensible tone curve to each color channel, perhaps selecting the optimum exposure, or perhaps combining exposures.

It might even be possible for the computer to take a first pass at aesthetics, and present the photographer with a roll of 36 images selected from the day's shoot. And the photographer would ultimately select the "keepers".

How much need is there, in fact, to be sitting in front of the computer futzing around with sliders?

And how much fun would any of this be?

ps Now that I think about it I probably have shot two digital keepers, not one.

 

[xenohip]

Exposure time called for is 1/4 second, and your image stabilizer isn't quite up to it?

No problem, just point the camera and hold down the button for 25 seconds. One of the resulting 100 is sure to be very sharp, if not tack sharp.

The computer could no doubt tell you which 5 out of the 100 are the sharpest.

 

[kennylovrin]

I'm pretty sure several smartphones does that. I think the iPhone does at least (presents what it thinks is the best shot from a burst). Never tried it myself though.

 

[xenohip]

I think there was a Sony digi-cam that came out a while ago that would shoot 5 and pick the best one for you.

I'm talking about doing this on an industrial scale-- routinely generating hundreds of captures per image and dumping them to the computer for automated post-processing.

And to be clear, I have no interest whatsoever in trying it myself!

 

[xenohip]

Technically, the photographer wouldn't even need to be present at the scene.

Cover football games with robots that walk up and down the sidelines: point here, point there, zoom in, zoom out, following a cleverly devised algorithmic sequence. Sort of the same as the roomba that automatically vacuums your house.

Ooops, accidentally caught a fan with his tongue hanging out staring at a cheerleader whose boob had fallen out of her bra while the guy's girlfriend eats a hotdog. And look, it's perfectly exposed and perfectly in focus! We'll keep that one for the special interest section of the article.

 

[Mcary]

Each person should photograph as much as they need to to get the photos they want. There is no wrong way to photograph and there is no harm in photographing a lot.

+1

Sometime I can look at a scene in front of me and see a photograph while other times I can see the potential for photograph, sometime I end up being right and other times I end up being wrong Thing is even if I'm wrong on that day and that times there's always a chance that if I return on a different day/time when the lighting/weather condition are different that potential photograph will be there for me to capture.

Time to go outside and check to see what the sky/clouds look like and make a decision on which spot/areas to head to look for potential photographs.