How many photos per roll are you happy with?

How many shots per roll are you happy with?

  • 1

    Votes: 125 23.6%

  • 2

    Votes: 64 12.1%

  • 3

    Votes: 81 15.3%

  • 4

    Votes: 62 11.7%

  • 5

    Votes: 43 8.1%

  • 6+

    Votes: 154 29.1%
  • Total voters
    529
CopperB said:
"Good" for me at this stage is if it's in focus and not totally under exposed - a much lower standard than most of you here.
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Yet that's a good basis, Patti! We can add to that a lack of camera shake, processing errors, etc too. While we work on technical improvement (errr, almost said "perfection"), hopefully there will be some aesthetic successes along the way. Some will be surprises, maybe even accidental success from "mistakes" gone good.

The whole question of the thread can be ambiguous... What is meant by "happy with"? How happy? How good must a "keeper" be? It's all very variable and individual. Some are pickier, more self-critical. "Happy with" is still a good goal though!
 
What I really want to see when I develop a roll of film these days is thirty six correct exposures! At least I know that when I get the composition correct I won't have it ruined by a poor exposure that will torment me in post processing! :p
 
It’s pretty important to keep digital files or negatives around for awhile and take another look a couple of weeks or a month later. I came back from a landscape shooting trip one time and looked through two or three rolls and was very disappointed. I didn’t think I had gotten anything on those rolls. I put them aside and looked at them a month later and found three on one roll that somehow had become very nice photographs over that month. Sometimes first time I look at them I have too many expectations. A month later I can look at with fresh eyes and can judge them much better.
 
Every roll of film that I used to take photos of my family gives me 36 keepers. Once I hit the streets, I would be happy to get just 1 or 2 keepers per roll.
 
When I was shooting a Leicsflex SL and using 36 exp film I might get 4 or 5 keepers on a roll. That camera was magical. Now that I'm shooting 6x6 MF w/ 120 film I feel good if I get 1 keeper out of 2 or 3 rolls, so the success rate has gone down.

barnwolf made a very valid point about checking your shots after some time has passed. It's nearly always surprising how differently you see them.
 
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Depending on how challenging conditions are, I'm going for 75%+ correctly exposed and in focus. Less than that and I'm sloppy. More, and I'm hesitating on the shutter release.

On an average day on the street I might get 3 to 6 passably good shots on a roll of 36. On a bad day I might get less than a shot per roll. I've had a couple of days in my life where I had 20 or 25 per roll.

I dream about those days.
 
Usually all my shots are well exposed, well focused, unless I am experimenting. Technically, most of my photos are "correct". However, on most rolls, only one photo would be worth to be printed. Often, none of them is good enough, to my eyes, to be printed and hanged on a wall.

Sometimes I get more lucky : I happen to be at the right place at the right time, and I can get up to 4, 5 good photos in a row.

That said, I am very careful in my shooting, and I burn less than a roll per month, unless I am travelling.
 
totifoto said:
If you shoot a 36 frame roll how many frames do you have to get from that roll to be happy?

If I get one that is perfect I´m happy but I wanna get at least 5 good frame from a roll.

When I shoot 6X6 I wanna get at least 3.
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3 from a roll of 6x6! I'd be happy with one every third roll.

Be your own best critic is my attitude. I don't care whether I shoot ten rolls of 36 or fill a 16gb card every week, I'm not going to judge my images like an accountant or CEO who wants to make the company books look healthier. So if I get ten from one roll of 36 and none from the next four rolls thats OK, the Karma wasn't there, the mood wasn't right, it doesn't matter, thats how it works. Nothing is really wasted anyway because I've been experimenting and working at things and trying stuff. And if I'm ever down at the mouth about a wasted day out I look at copies of contact sheets from the great photographers. And you only need to see the experiments either side of 'the' photograph to realise there must be many more contact sheets of images that are all failed experiments.

The problem with expecting a hit rate is that images that are not really 'perfect' are forced to become 'perfect' just to balance the books. But thats not to say you shouldn't show people the imperfect images, thats where ideas can coalesce and mature. Just don't expect five pictures from every roll of 36 you shoot to be shown in your lifetime retrospective show at the Guggenheim, they won't really be that perfect.

Steve
 
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Depends on circumstance, sometimes I go out shooting looking to take something to put on the wall, in that case I'll be happy if I just get that one shot.

If I'm out at a bar or something and just happen to have a camera with me, I don't mind if it's all just snapshots, because that's all I wanted.

On holidays etc. when I'm unlikely to be able to repeat the photo shoot soon, then I'll want a pretty high keep rate.
 
I do expect at least 70% technically right, just that, the content may not be that I like.

Then maybe 5 or 6 out of 36 exp with 2 or 3 being 3/5 stars (I like), occasionally 1 or 2 with 4 stars, hardly get one frame with 5 stars. I do scan all of them and keeping all for review and learning. Sometimes, I find a few being 'interesting' for testing of different representation after editing.

I personally don't believe technically correct pictures are good pictures, but it certainly requires good grasp of skills to capture/present what I want to make. A photo IMHO should always be an impression at heart.
 
I usually don't have any expectations. But when I take my M6 and Summicrons to India, I have come to expect at least 15 amazing frames per roll. And I'm quite picky about image quality. What a wonderful tool.
 
Number of good shots on a roll of film

Number of good shots on a roll of film

I was reading something written by Ansel Adams from a book titled, Photographers on Photography Edited by Nathan Lyons published in 1966. Ansel said that if he gets ten good photographs a year that he is satisfied with that. So I guess my hopes for at least 1 good shot per roll is actually pretty high expectations. Sometimes I get maybe 3 on a roll and then again I get rolls that have nothing that I want to keep. - jim

The book has several pages written by a lot of the old great photographers like, Berenice Abbott, Wynn Bullock, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Dorthea Lang, W. Eugene Smith, Steichen, Stieglitz, Strand, Weston, and Minor White and others.
 
RFH said:
I usually don't have any expectations. But when I take my M6 and Summicrons to India, I have come to expect at least 15 amazing frames per roll. And I'm quite picky about image quality. What a wonderful tool.
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It wont be difficult, some places you can just point and click and its instanly going to have something interesting.
 
somewhere in between 20 and zero (on a 36 exp roll). hardly ever more than twenty. but even in the rare event of 20 satisfying shots (happens more in 'reportage' rather than 'street'), I'd still edit them down to a selection 4-8 frames, usually.
 
I voted 1 per roll - but that's way too high. Shots I'm really satisfied with (not talking of exposure and focus) are probably less than 1 in every 5 rolls, or something like that... (well, we have to set the bar high). Shots I can show to friends, maybe 2-3 per roll. Obviously much depends on what kind of photography I do - with street photo having the lowest success rate.
 
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