How many images do you take in a normal outing?

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How many images do you normally take in a single outing?

  • 0-100

    Votes: 9 10.1%

  • 100-250

    Votes: 10 11.2%

  • 250-500

    Votes: 23 25.8%

  • 500-1000

    Votes: 26 29.2%

  • 1000 and above

    Votes: 21 23.6%
  • Total voters
    89
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It really depends on the situation. For general photography like weekend birding it's about 600-800 pics per session if it's a good session.

I just came back from Jim Corbett National Park with 2 amazing sightings that were like dream come true moments. Was there for 4 days, did 8 safaris but the actual sightings lasted for just about 30 mins and I came home with about 14000 odd images....just couldn't miss even a single frame of those 4 month old tiger cubs playing.
 
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thelordofthelight said:
It really depends on the situation. For general photography like weekend birding it's about 600-800 pics per session if it's a good session.

I just came back from Jim Corbett National Park with 2 amazing sightings that were like dream come true moments. Was there for 4 days, did 8 safaris but the actual sightings lasted for just about 30 mins and I came home with about 14000 odd images....just couldn't miss even a single frame of those 4 month old tiger cubs playing.
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That’s a lot to sort thru lol but I bet you got some amazing images.
 
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bleirer said:
I don't seek out birds, but I imagine they are the card-fillers. For other scenes of nature, if the light isn't changing much then one "scene" might have a hundred shots. Different amounts of zoom, different angles, different distance from subject. I'm confident enough in exposure I don't need bracketing unless I'm going for an hdr. Shooting panorama would have more. But then I walk 100 feet down a trail and something else catches my eye, so another 100. So a 2-3 hour hike could have 1000 shots, of which ten might be seriously edited and one or two might make it to show other
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I typically go out for a 2 or 3 hour session in the morning and again for 2 or 3 hours in the evening. On a typical session I will typically come home with 300 or so images, but I will also cull some images (the obvious throw-aways, missed focus, clipped wings, etc.). That said, I tend to shoot in short, tight bursts....it's just my shooting style. For landscapes/flora my typical image count is much smaller.
 
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Ha, almost never below 1000 frames per session and usually in the 3-5K range. That is the effect of 50 f/s and frequent use of ProCapture (pre-capture). Now, with the larger buffer in my new camera, I expect to have that number go up a bit.

On my next trip, to laguna Seca ranch and South Padre Island Birding Center and Convention Center, I expect a target rich environment so I may well be in the 6-8K range.

I never delete anything. I just dump everything on my NAS
 
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sh1209 said:
I am pretty conservative with how many images I take most of the time. Usually I will go out for 2-3 hours early morning and most of the time come home with 200-600 images that I normally cull thru roughly right away after loading into Lightroom. I think the most I’ve ever taken in a single outing was a little over 2000 and that was mostly due to doing numerous photo stacking shots for macro. To me it’s just overwhelming coming home with so many images to cull. I normally delete everything I don’t edit but keep the raw file for the edit and the edited tiff so I am definitely heavy handed with deleting. I’m just curious if most folks are in the same boat or shoot far more images when out.
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It depends on what I see. If all I see is a bird in a tree, I won't take that many photos of it. If I find an owl hunting, I could take thousands. There's no way to put a number on it.
 
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OM-1 mark II

My new plan if I see a bird in a tree I will take a High-Res shot of it. That is 9 images right there. If the light is low, I will try dropping my shutter speed to ridiculous lows and snap of many-many shots so that at least 1 will be sharp because the bird was not moving. I can see myself taking hundreds of images where a Z-8/600pf shooter might take 5. I expect (hope) to get an equivalent image to the Z-9/600pf with my 300f4 on an m43 body.

For BIF I will probably shoot in ProCapture (Pre_Capture) 100% of the time. Once I half-press the camera will pre-store 1/2 second (25 images) until I decide to fully press and write them to the card. With a buffer of 250 images, 25 is a drop in the bucket and I might miss something happening while I am tracking the bird. I will get lots more poses of the BIF than the Z-8/600pf user.

I write this to explain how a different style of shooting is required with a m43 sensor to get equivalent pictures to a full-frame 45mp Z-8.
 
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Tom Reynolds said:
OM-1 mark II

My new plan if I see a bird in a tree I will take a High-Res shot of it. That is 9 images right there. If the light is low, I will try dropping my shutter speed to ridiculous lows and snap of many-many shots so that at least 1 will be sharp because the bird was not moving. I can see myself taking hundreds of images where a Z-8/600pf shooter might take 5. I expect (hope) to get an equivalent image to the Z-9/600pf with my 300f4 on an m43 body.

For BIF I will probably shoot in ProCapture (Pre_Capture) 100% of the time. Once I half-press the camera will pre-store 1/2 second (25 images) until I decide to fully press and write them to the card. With a buffer of 250 images, 25 is a drop in the bucket and I might miss something happening while I am tracking the bird. I will get lots more poses of the BIF than the Z-8/600pf user.

I write this to explain how a different style of shooting is required with a m43 sensor to get equivalent pictures to a full-frame 45mp Z-8.
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I would really like to try one of the Olympus m4/3 cameras someday. Their lenses look pretty awesome as well as being nice and small
 
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sh1209 said:
I would really like to try one of the Olympus m4/3 cameras someday. Their lenses look pretty awesome as well as being nice and small
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I am comparing the OM-1 mark II with a 300f4 lens with a Z-8 and a 600pf lens. The OM-1 combo is smaller and lighter but the Z-8/600pf is not that much heavier or lighter but there is a big price difference.

In a zoom, things get more interesting because an OM-1/100-500 is much smaller and lighter than a Z-8/180-600.

OM Systems also has a 150-600 which is heavy and a 150-400f4.5 which is awesome but expensive. I have neither of these lenses.

Tom
 
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Typically 1500-3000 in a 3hr morning. I shoot 30FPS....if I don't fell like culling that day I switch to 15FPS....now I'm at 750-1500 shots.
I cull once....usually keeping 5-10% of the images. I then typically process 10-25 shots total. I have considered going back and deleting the rest after processing the 10-25 but because storage is cheap I don't even bother and sometimes I do come back to a shoot and grab a few more to process. But to be honest, that rarely happens as I'm always on to the next outing and don't bother going back.

Using my friends culling program he wrote I can get through 1500 shots in 5-10mins. The program is designed to cull from the card and then ingest the 5-10% keepers onto my "Current Year" portable SSD and import those into LR. In LR I just scroll through and grab my favs, I spend about 5s per shot processing, run the 10-25 shots as a batch through LR AI NR (which is what takes the longest but I can just let it be).
 
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arbitrage said:
Typically 1500-3000 in a 3hr morning. I shoot 30FPS....if I don't fell like culling that day I switch to 15FPS....now I'm at 750-1500 shots.
I cull once....usually keeping 5-10% of the images. I then typically process 10-25 shots total. I have considered going back and deleting the rest after processing the 10-25 but because storage is cheap I don't even bother and sometimes I do come back to a shoot and grab a few more to process. But to be honest, that rarely happens as I'm always on to the next outing and don't bother going back.

Using my friends culling program he wrote I can get through 1500 shots in 5-10mins. The program is designed to cull from the card and then ingest the 5-10% keepers onto my "Current Year" portable SSD and import those into LR. In LR I just scroll through and grab my favs, I spend about 5s per shot processing, run the 10-25 shots as a batch through LR AI NR (which is what takes the longest but I can just let it be).
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I've contemplated trying one of those programs but have a system I use with number ratings in the library module within Lightroom that I can go thru images fairly quickly. Somewhere between 10-20% is all I keep as well most of the time but a little higher when doing macro.
 
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Since I used BIF primarily, 20 fps is required to get more wing positions, especially for fast flyers like ducks. Consequently, my typical shoot varies between 1200 and 3000 shots. Lots to go through, but I love the Z9 tracking as it provides me a lot of keepers!
 
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On a typically day out shooting for two or three hours of SEO's when there is lots of action, I'll come home with between 1000 to 3000 images. I typically shoot at 20 or 30fps when shooting BIF. I cull from the memory card prior to uploading to my PC. I've tried everything to discipline myself into being more aggressive in culling, I typically try to mark only those images I want to keep and delete the rest. However, I'm not quite disciplined enough apparently because I still keep far too many images. But memory is cheap so keeping lots of images doesn't really bother me too much. The truth is, after making my initial pass at culling I rarely come back to process any more images from that outing.
 
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Interesting how you all think. For me it depends. If I’m out walking I may shoot 10 images if things are slow but if the action is heavy I can shoot 4K. Usually around 500 to 1500 unless I’m doing hummingbirds then things tend to ramp up a bit. I always shoot at 20 fps and even on stills shoot short bursts. I’m handholding so I tend to take more than is absolutely necessary but I’m looking for fine details and would rather have more than less. I get home and dump into LR and quickly go thru them in capture time mode using 1-1 previews. Ones that I think have promise get a single star. The others I leave blank. When at the end, I set the order to rating that pops the starred images to the top then highlight all the unstarred ones and hit the reject flag then I delete them off my HD. I can go thru 1k images in under an hour. I usually keep a couple of similar shots just in case I screw something up in post. Also I tend to look at things at 200% or even higher unless it’s very close. If it’s a lot more than 1k I’ll do some then take a break and come back and do more.
 
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When I was starting out I used to take 2k or more on a d7100 at 5fps especially things like warblers. I have learned thru painful experience to let go shots where I know the shot will absolutely suck and not waste my time. This is especially challenging when you have a special bird that just won’t quite sit still or come out from cover only to give it’s lovely butt.
 
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For wildlife I don't set a limit, I just shoot. But I don't shoot at 20fps, more like at 10 on fast and use a finger on, finger off kind of approach. I would not want to miss a good shot of something I may never get to shoot again just because I don't want to go through the images. On a recent trip to Homer I took around 6,000 shots of otters (deleted around 3,000): I was trying to get a decent shot of an otter, of course, but I was also trying to get a decent shot of the mom and baby together and that was really difficult as most often they simply looked like wet rags rolling in the water and I was glad I took a lot of shots. I did get some nice shots but had to go thru them all to find the shots but I'm patient. I took over 3,000 shots of the eagles, mostly inflight, but some portraits. I always find it interesting how animals make it difficult, a bird drops that third eyelid, a bear moves it's head right at the wrong time, another animal photo bombs the shot, a wing covers the eye, one eye open-one eye closed, the list is long, so I take a lot of shots and look at them all when I return from a trip like the one to Homer (I have no plans to take that trip again). Nearer home I might take a couple of hundred of a moving subject, but it would be something I can shoot again so no big deal if I don't get the shot I want right then. I'm always looking for some kind of action, a movement somewhere, a unique expression, and sometimes that takes a lot of shots. I have several cards so fill them up, I always do a backup to a laptop, then if I need to I do a second backup and re-use a card.
 
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I was out for about 6 hours yesterday. I shot 458 images. I imported 110 to my library and will probably delete 40-50 of them in the next couple days once I've edited the ones I want to keep. Next Janurary when I do my annual purge, I may end up keeping 10-15 of these images before deleting the rest.

This is a pretty typical day for me. My wife and I get in the field 3-4 times a week.

Jeff
 
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jeffnles1 said:
I was out for about 6 hours yesterday. I shot 458 images. I imported 110 to my library and will probably delete 40-50 of them in the next couple days once I've edited the ones I want to keep. Next Janurary when I do my annual purge, I may end up keeping 10-15 of these images before deleting the rest.

This is a pretty typical day for me. My wife and I get in the field 3-4 times a week.

Jeff
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That’s pretty much average for how many frames I shoot
 
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