Number of keepers per roll?

[boffen]

How many pictures do you usually scan (if you scan selectively)/post to flickr/publicize per roll? I just picked up four rolls of developed film, and I scanned ten and posted none to flickr, and I thought it'd be cool to know how selective others are.

Also, if anyone has scans of entire rolls from any of "the greats", post them! It'd be really cool to see.

 

[John Rountree]

For me, a ratio of about one in 30 is acceptable. If you want to see "the greats" rolls, there is a hard to find book, published by Lustrum Press called Contact Sheet. Several photographers show a contact sheet of a whole roll of film and explain how they made their choices. Also, the recent, large biography/retrospective of Diane Arbus has several pages of contact sheets, including the one with the boy in Central Park holding a toy gernade. It is quite revealing.

 

[dovi]

Depends

Depends

Sometimes I am in the "zone". When that happens I am feeling wat I shoot.
I like my results more.

When I am not in the mood, I tend to have colder shots that I dislike. They look more pointless and drab. I find this happens when just testing out/learning gear because I am less interested in what I shoot.

If I dont rush through a roll and wait till I am in the zone, I get more keepers.

I think to place an average per roll does not really work for me because the other factors mean more, like being rested and in good spirits. I find that the trick for me is to not to anticipate the final product, but to just go about enjoying shoting what's interesting.

 

[thegf]

it seems to me that some people on the internet overstate their "keepers" or have really low standards of what they produce. i recently saw a blog where the guy said he had a 70% keeper rate. but when i looked at some of his pictures, there were a lot of kitschy out-of-focus shots that looked awful. (why is this in style these days. some people assume if you shoot film, you can take terrible shots and the medium somehow makes up for it.)

for me, if i can get 1-5 good shots on a roll i am happy. maybe others are "keepers" in the sense that things are in focus and properly exposed, but that's a different story.

 

[Rogier]

10% on my Leica
50% on my Holga

 

[t.s.k.]

Nothing wrong with starting another thread but here's the last time it was asked.

Keeper poll

 

[redisburning]

depends on what I want the images for.

I took a roll of film of a night out with my friends and out of 36 exposures 4 were not taken by me (none were in focus) and I posted 22 out of 32 exposures to my facebook.

Out of those 32, 6 made it to my flickr and really I could delete one of those and not be too bothered by that.

I have like 7 or 8 rolls of film that I need to send out. I am hoping for a similar ratio.

 

[kokoshawnuff]

For a typical roll around town I'll scan about 20 of 39. Wait a day then I'll go back and weed through them and wind up keeping about 8-10 on lightroom of those 8-10 maybe 1 or 2 will go on flickr. For a roll taken on vacation the numbers are a bit higher, maybe I'll scan 30 and keep 15-20 and post 2-3. I'm going to start getting about 5 4x6 prints per roll just to see some of the results in print.

 

[besk]

35mm cameras - about 10 out of 36. More if landscape type subjects.

At least with my Mamiya Press flattop I can throw away anything I don't like because I am using sheet film in Grafmatics.

 

[gns]

The other day there was a thread about Sam Abell and a link to a video about a National Geographic assignment he worked on. I think he mentioned something like 700 rolls of film from which eight were used in the article. That should pretty much put to rest anyone's concern for "Hit rate" efficiency.

Cheers,
Gary

 

[ChrisPlatt]

...some people on the internet overstate their "keepers"...

I order double prints, so my keeper rate is 200%! 😉

Chris