Keepers?

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pcfranchina

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Years ago someone told me if you get 1 keeper per roll of film shot you are doing ok. I'm sure life is a little different with a fancy AF SLR. Besides for my DSLR I have never owned a AF camera. So sometimes my focus is off, sometimes exposure is off, or sometimes it's just a bad shot.
How many keepers do you usually get per roll?
 
When I'm really "on", I'd peg it at 15-20%, with perhaps another 10% in the "you never know" category. But that's when everything's clicking, not just the shutter.


- Barrett
 
define 'keeper' - for me a keeper is an image that i feel compelled to print and that is exposed accurately enough to produce a high quality print with...

with that in mind, i'm probably only compelled to print one out of every three - five rolls of 35mm film...
 
I must have shot hundreds of rolls of film, but I still haven't shot that one perfect picture.. I doubt I ever will.
 
I shot two consecutive rolls, all keepers the other week. That was 6x9, so only 8 rolls per frame, and a fully thought out trip to a scenic place, and all shot off a tripod....
For handheld shots, I get maybe 5-10 percent with 35mm, and maybe twice that with medium format. It is all about attitude, and all about what you're shooting. Moving, unpredictable shots are obviously more failure intensive, and that's why 35mm film comes in rolls of 36, not 8. Or so I see it.
 
I keep everything, except a blank. One never knows how a shot that today looks completely dull and boring may turn out to be a cracker sometime in the future. Insights change, my views change, etc and even a dull shot could be the basis of something utterly interesting (even if you can't imagine it now).
 
Depends on why I'm shooting.
The last night thee restaurant I worked in was open, I shot about 100 frames--four rolls of "24" exposure 35mm film(I can usually get 26-7 shots out of those) and about 75% of those were keepers. Not great or anything like that but a good record of who was there and what we were doing.
When I'm shooting for myself, I'm very happy with 10% or so and ecstatic if I get above that.
And even the shots no one but me is going to see don't get tossed; I will look at them again after some time has passed--sometimes my opinion of them changes.
Rob
 
1-2 per roll of 36 is good for me.

With 4x5 that goes upto 30-50%.

Although I just shot a roll of street shots in Chicago of which there a NINE shots I quite like. Bit of a personal record for me. You can see them here.

Anupam
 
Both Bryce and RML are onto something. On the one hand, the "faster" the camera in-hand, the more likely one's "percentage" is to go down; the camera with the slower frame-rate more-or-less forces you to slow down the thought process a bit. Then, too, what you might have regarded in a moment's hasty judgement as "so-so" just might, given time, become something quite special. This is why I'm leery of the "go/no-go" nature of digital capture; it's all too easy to pitch an image in the heat of the moment (such as running out of/low on card storage space in the field...unless you have the cash for a fistful of 4GB cards, you know what I'm talking about). You can shuffle through images on that lil' screen and decide what to pitch right there and then, but have you ever tossed something that made you think, a few seconds later, "§#!‡, I shouldn't have done that!"? At least a few of my most-cherished images were things I wouldn't have given a second thoought to shortly after viewing the contact sheet or proof. (Ah, but I was so much older then...)


- Barrett
 
One per 10x36 frames, i.e. 0.1 per cassette, if I'm lucky

When I did weddings about 30 per 36, brides are not critical, about nephews with finger up nostril.

Noel
 
Depends on what the criteria is for a keeper. I take it for granted these days that the subject will be in focus, and the exposure reasonably correct, irrespective of whether I'm shooting rangefinder, SLR or digital. Whether the image was worth taking, or as monochromejrnl says, worth printing, is an entirely different matter! Boring photos can be technically perfect but still boring.
 
Xmas said:
When I did weddings about 30 per 36, brides are not critical, about nephews with finger up nostril.

Noel
Click to expand...
I'd somewhat beg to differ. The brides I've dealt with have all had a pretty sharp eye, and I've reagarded it a bad move to take their "view" for granted. Definitely helped keep me on my toes.


- Barrett
 
I've had rolls where nothing good has come out despite my initial hopes. It's so disheartening when you look through and find nothing of value.

I generally find that the camera I shoot with determines how many keepers I get, much like the folks who mentioned that they get more keepers with medium format. My Olympus XA is a wonderful camera, but I get far fewer keepers than with my Fed 4. The Fed is good because the viewfinder is so poor that I have to concentrate far more when I take a picture and I'm not tempted to snap away. My Konica C35 is even worse- a nice viewfinder, easy mechanism, just click and wind, click and wind...

C35 - about 10%
XA-2 - about 15%
Fed 4 - about 35%
Fed 2 - still waiting for the test roll to come back! :)
 
Interesting discussion and I would agree about the perhaps 2 or 3 keepers on a 36 frame film. However when I look at my keepers taken some time back I often change my mind - and wonder why I bothered. In another genre I do 'art work' and then put it to one side. A few days later I will see it from a different perspective and can often see 'faults' I didn't realise existed. I like to think improvements can be made and do get made.
Try a few acid questions.
Why did you take the photograph?
What did you take the photo for?
What are you going to do with the image now you have it?
 
Per roll of 36, usually at least one or two, maybe five, sometimes nine or ten, that I'd post here. Per five rolls of 36, maybe three or four that I'd take the trouble to print on fibre and tone archivally, one or two of which I'd hang or give as gifts. L'embarras de choix.

(To Anupam Basu: Liked your Chicago street stuff. The big blurry bicycle girl's a real cracker.)
 
I studied photography with a well known photographer who told us that he only was able to get one shot per roll and was happy with that percentage. He shot with a Rolleiflex so that would be .08%.
 
As others have said, it depends on what you mean by "keeper".

I keep all my shots, however bad, so I can't use that as a critierion.

Correctly focused and well exposed? Most of my shots are (or at least are very close).

Shots that I'd be happy to stick in a personal online gallery? It depends on what I'm doing - colour transparencies in SE Asia maybe 5 or 6 per roll, black and white shots around my native Liverpool maybe one shot every 2 or 3 rolls.

Shots that I really love and which make me think "If I never shoot another photo I'll be satisfied with what I've achieved in my photography"? I've haven't shot one of those yet, not in 37 years.

Cheers,
 
I really couldn't put a number on it. They're usually all sharp, well exposed and composed as I had wished at the time but often what I thought would be a worthy image when I made it becomes painfully dull and ordinary when I look at the negs after the event. On other occasions it all seems to come together and I may get a roll where they're all worth printing. 'Worth printing,' however to me does not mean its a necessarily a keeper.


I also find it much easier to make a desicion on the value of others images than my own. I know whether its technically a decent image but the artistic merits can only really be judged by others without my own sentiment and knowledge of the image making process behind it clouding my judgement.


I have probably got twenty odd images taken in the last five years that I believe are truly worthy of any real praise or interest. However I know that friends, colleagues and members of the public that have viewed some of my photographs put great value on images that I take for granted or think little of.


Its also why I like film so much, I never throw away negatives - though I've lost far too many through burglery, water damage and careless removal men over the years. Digital images probably give me a greater hit rate as its possible to view a form of contact sheet as you work though this ( chimping, I believe ) can cause as many problems as those it may solve. I have invested in 8mb flash cards and never delete the images as I go, though this causes me much more work/time when going through them afterwards.


As for medium/large format and any other imaging that allows for a more considered approach my hit rate will usually be much greater as the refined control is there from the start of the process to the end....I may still hate the images afterwards though:bang:
 
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