Sooner or later...

[Sonnar Brian]

Nikon S3 with 10.5cm f2.5, wide-open.

Low Latency? Not sure- but I have good luck with Butterflies and Kids.

 

[Jamie123]

Highlight 1: I only said 'probably', and I did add 'or at most two'. Though I don't think Karsh was noted for overshooting. Or Jane Bown. And even the Hollywood photographers of the 1930s (Bull, Hurrell, etc.) seldom shot more than 24 pictures.

Highlight 2: Yes, I said it was a reductio ad absurdum.

Highlight 3: But not more than 40 (a mix of 35mm and 120).

Cheers,

R.

Re. 1: I don't know how many sheets Karsh or any other 30s Hollywood photographer exposed during a regular session. Surely not as much as a comparable photographer working in 35mm but probably also not as little as one might expect. Every part of the photographic process has an influence on how the image turns out

Re. 2: I didn't quite understand your use of reductio ad absurdum so I just ignored it. A reductio ad absurdum in logic is the introduction of a (presumably) false premise into an argument which leads to a contradictory conclusion (i.e. x and non-x), thus showing the introduced premise to be false. I might be a bit too strict about this, though, as I'm a philosophy major.

Re. 3: I think I misunderstood your initial post. I thought you had shot more than 40 frames (i.e. 2-3 rolls), not 40 rolls. 40 rolls might really be taking it a bit too far.

In the end my point is simply that you cannot judge the quality of a photographer from the amount of times he clicks the shutter. A good photographer is someone who consistently produces good images and knows what he needs to do to get them. For some that's taking a single 8x10 exposure and for some that's shooting off roll after roll of 35mm.
Personally, I prefer a 'less is more' approach but that's just part of who I am and what I like.

On a related note, I once read an interview with Ryan McGinley in which he said he had been comissioned to photograph Robert Frank at his house. He said Frank got mad because he (McGinley) constantly clicked the shutter. I guess we know Robert Frank's attitude towards 'overshooting' 🙂

 

[yanidel]

Overshooting to me is taking shots that I know will be crap. Usually it happens when I am not inspired or not patient.

I kind of follow the "moment is gone" philosophy. If the first shot is not right, than the moment is gone and therefore my initial perception cannot be recorded anymore. But I'll still give it another shot if I feel the scene is really worth it. I very hardly ever take more than 3 shots from a given scene.

 

[Sonnar Brian]

The only bad thing about "over-shooting" is when you see another photographer throwing out (or deleting) his worst shots and they are better than your best shots.

 

[Krzys]

With film..overshoot all you like as long as you keep on buying film. In fact we should all overshoot and stimulate film sales a little.

Looking at Garry Winogrand's contact sheets you can see that he fired off atleast 3-5 exposures of every subject he came across. No wonder he burned through so much film.

 

[retnull]

Most of the time I am shooting unposed candid shots of my family. One is usually enough, but it's often useful to squeeze off a few extra, because facial expressions change so rapidly. Sometimes if it feels like a special moment somehow -- nice emotion, nice lighting -- click click click click click, gotta get that keeper.

 

[Keith]

With film..overshoot all you like as long as you keep on buying film. In fact we should all overshoot and stimulate film sales a little.

Looking at Garry Winogrand's contact sheets you can see that he fired off atleast 3-5 exposures of every subject he came across. No wonder he burned through so much film.

Why do nine out of ten discussions that analyse points of potential difference in technique turn into pi$$ing competitions around here?

I don't care how many frames the Mapplethorps, Winogrands, Arbus's etc shot to be able to show us their individual visions ... it matters not!

 

[emraphoto]

"The currently-popular shoot-chimp-shoot method seems almot the polar opposite, but let's not even go there for now"

this is another one of those behaviors that seems best viewed at the end of ones nose and again i am not sure i understand. when i arrive somewhere and start my routine i chimp (if shooting digital). i shoot primarily manual and why the hell wouldn't i check out my lighting? it's a brilliant tool/advantage of shooting digital and i for one am going to use it. just like i take meter readings frequently while working.

i am a proud chimper and does it really indicate anything about my ability as a photographer? i don't believe so.

as far as the original question... it would be senseless to shoot the same thing 20 times. heck, 3 times is pointless. with that said, i shoot a lot. i am always trying angles, lighting, apertures etc. try things out, try things out, try things out. am i reckless and hoping for the best while hammering away? certainly not but i sure would appear as though i was if you happened upon me one day. shooting away with a pause here and there to chimp.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Re. 1: I don't know how many sheets Karsh or any other 30s Hollywood photographer exposed during a regular session. Surely not as much as a comparable photographer working in 35mm but probably also not as little as one might expect. Every part of the photographic process has an influence on how the image turns out

Re. 2: I didn't quite understand your use of reductio ad absurdum so I just ignored it. A reductio ad absurdum in logic is the introduction of a (presumably) false premise into an argument which leads to a contradictory conclusion (i.e. x and non-x), thus showing the introduced premise to be false. I might be a bit too strict about this, though, as I'm a philosophy major.

Re. 3: I think I misunderstood your initial post. I thought you had shot more than 40 frames (i.e. 2-3 rolls), not 40 rolls. 40 rolls might really be taking it a bit too far.

In the end my point is simply that you cannot judge the quality of a photographer from the amount of times he clicks the shutter. A good photographer is someone who consistently produces good images and knows what he needs to do to get them. For some that's taking a single 8x10 exposure and for some that's shooting off roll after roll of 35mm.
Personally, I prefer a 'less is more' approach but that's just part of who I am and what I like.

On a related note, I once read an interview with Ryan McGinley in which he said he had been comissioned to photograph Robert Frank at his house. He said Frank got mad because he (McGinley) constantly clicked the shutter. I guess we know Robert Frank's attitude towards 'overshooting' 🙂

1: In Hollywood, about 24. I did a book on it once.

2: Reductio ad absurdum: taking a valid premise ('a good photographer may well do better with 10 shots than a bad one with 100') and extending it to absurd lengths (a 'perfect' photographer would only need 1). This can most easily be done by ignoring other premises, rather thany by introducing new onces.

"In the end..." Well, yes. But it's interesting to learn how others work, often with a view to learning how to do things better oneself. I used to shoot more than I do now. So did Turtle (I particularly liked his point about not trying to squeeze more images out of an overworked subject).

I don't think any of us is getting into a pissing contest. Just trying to learn.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Sparrow]

In the urban environment I don't see how one can "over-shoot" the moment happens and then it's gone, there is only time for the one photo, one can only have a single go at it so it's difficult to use lots of film.

With portraits, I find, I know it when I get it nailed, within the first roll normally, if I had nothing by the end of the end of the roll I'd be looking to change something (location or lighting or model or whatever)

The world has lots of landscapes, adding more than one a month seems excessive to me ...

 

[yanidel]

With film..overshoot all you like as long as you keep on buying film. In fact we should all overshoot and stimulate film sales a little.

Looking at Garry Winogrand's contact sheets you can see that he fired off atleast 3-5 exposures of every subject he came across. No wonder he burned through so much film.

At the same time, thousands of Winogrand exposed but undevelopped films were found at his death. He apparently enjoyed more the act of taking a photograph than looking at the result.

 

[Jamie123]

2: Reductio ad absurdum: taking a valid premise ('a good photographer may well do better with 10 shots than a bad one with 100') and extending it to absurd lengths (a 'perfect' photographer would only need 1). This can most easily be done by ignoring other premises, rather thany by introducing new onces.

In the strict sense in formal logic one would only speak of a reductio ad absurdum if the conclusion is actually self contradictory (which ''a perfect photographer would only need 1'') is not. Also there are valid arguments but no valid premises. In logic a reductio ad absurdum is not done by ignoring premises (an incomplete argument is called "enthymeme") but by introducing as a premise the opposite of what you're trying to prove to be true.
As an example, I might want to prove the statement ''Roger Hicks is a human being". If I want to show this to be true by way of reductio ad absurdum I would introduce the negation of this statement as a premise into a valid and otherwise sound argument (a valid argument is one where the conclusion logically follows from the premises, a sound argument is a valid argument of which the premises are true):

P 1: Roger Hicks is not a human being
P 2: Roger Hicks is a photographer
P 3: All photographers are human beings

C: Roger Hicks is a human being and Roger Hicks is not a human being.

If we are sure that P2 and P3 are true (let's assume P3 is true ;-) ), then P1 must be wrong. That's a (more or less) classic reductio ad absurdum.

Sorry for going so off topic. Just trying to show why in a strict logic sense the employment of the term is misleading here.

 

[antiquark]

2: Reductio ad absurdum: taking a valid premise ('a good photographer may well do better with 10 shots than a bad one with 100') and extending it to absurd lengths (a 'perfect' photographer would only need 1). This can most easily be done by ignoring other premises, rather thany by introducing new onces.

To be pedantic about it (hey, why not 🙂 ) that sounds more like a slippery slope fallacy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

And actually, the utmost level of photographic perfection would be, according to the original statement, a photographer who takes no pictures at all! (A Zen koan for the 21st century?)

 

[robert blu]

emraphoto says : i shoot a lot. i am always trying angles, lighting, apertures etc. try things out, try things out, try things out.
For sure this is not overshooting, this is trying to get the best from a certain subject or situation. It is a possibility that modern (digital) technology makes easier (cheaper ?) and it is good to benefit from it.

robert

 

[Roger Hicks]

Well, I am intrigued to learn that I have been using reductio ad absurdum incorrectly for decades, and I am quite fascinated that no-one has ever challenged me on it before, even in four years at law school. It must be that I paid more attention to Latin than to formal logic, though admittedly I was never keen on the latter because it always seemed to be one or the other, but seldom both.

Or is it, perhaps, that reductio ad absurdum is, in formal logic, what lawyers call a 'term of art', not possessing the logicians' formal, technical meaning to anyone else? Anyone except a formal logician would, I suggest, take the following as a classical reductio ad absurdum:

Lower tax rates invariably bring in higher revenues.

Therefore, zero tax rates will bring in infinite revenues.

Cheers,

R.

 

[Jamie123]

Well, I am intrigued to learn that I have been using reductio ad absurdum incorrectly for decades, and I am quite fascinated that no-one has ever challenged me on it before, even in four years at law school. It must be that I paid more attention to Latin than to formal logic, though admittedly I was never keen on the latter because it always seemed to be one or the other, but seldom both.

Or is it, perhaps, that reductio ad absurdum is, in formal logic, what lawyers call a 'term of art', not possessing the logicians' formal, technical meaning to anyone else? Anyone except a formal logician would, I suggest, take the following as a classical reductio ad absurdum:

Lower tax rates invariably bring in higher revenues.

Therefore, zero tax rates will bring in infinite revenues.

Cheers,

R.

Glad that I could help. Acutally, the English Wikipedia article for reductio ad absurdum does cite that "ome legal usage, and some common usage, depends on a much wider definition of reductio ad absurdum than proof by contradiction, where it is argued a proposition should be rejected because it has merely undesirable (though perhaps not actually self-contradictory) consequences. In a strict logical sense, this might be reductio ad incommodum rather than ad absurdum - since in formal logic, 'absurdity' applies only to impossible self-contradiction."

So sure, apparently there's this legal and common usage in English language that has a wider meaning. I have not contested your use of the word, I have only explained why I was thrown off by your mention of a reductio as in my native language there is no common usage of this word, just the technical one.

I will say, though, that a "classical" reductio ad absurdum ('classical' in the sense of relating to classical antiquity) is this method I refered to as it is known in formal logic going back to Aristotle (although, obviously, he used a greek term). For a very good article on reductio ad absurdum go to http://www.iep.utm.edu/reductio/
The common and legal usage derives from the technical usage, thus the original meaning should be kept in mind when employing the term in a lecturing manner. And it doesn't surprise me in the least that they don't teach logic in law school.

 

[sreed2006]

@Brian Sweeney

You captured an excellent picture of the butterfly! Some day I hope to get one that good.

I did have a long-shutter-lag camera when I was trying to capture the butterfly with the flapping wings that were always closed when the shutter opened. It's very frustrating to press the shutter button at exactly the right instant, or what you predict to be the right instant, and the camera takes its sweet time - and then takes too long. I never did get the hang of it, so now I only use that camera for still life pictures.

As for my son blinking - his eyelids and camera shutters are magically linked. Shutter lag, no shutter lag, self-timer on 10 seconds, 2 seconds, sneak up on him, wait until he just blinked, you name it. Thank goodness I can put the camera on continuous mode and just overshoot like crazy. I've gotten some really good shots of him that way. Anything else is about a 75% chance of failure.

 

[Keith]

Anyone who's concerned about over shooting ... get a Crown Graphic or similar and put all the other stuff away for a while. I have yet to manage shooting more than twelve images in a day with mine ... and I've really tried occasionally! 😛

 

[DNG]

My Problem is not over shooting, but I am a "Hoarder" of the Bad Images :bang::bang:
I can't seem to "Delete" them...thinking I will see the image in a different light months or years later ! 😕

I need H E L P 😱

 

[kossi008]

Overshooting? Don't think I've ever done that. I discussed it with my film caddie the other day, and he backed me up, over the objections of some of the junior roll-haulers... 😀

Sorry, couldn't resist. Someone one or two pages up already put in my true answer: when I am shooting with no clear picture in mind, just in order to shoot, I am usually overshooting.

As Ansel Adams put it: "... a sharp picture of a fuzzy concept". I do say "usually", because sometimes, I suprise myself...