What is the average success rate of "good" negatives that you get from 1 roll of film? By good I mean a negative with the qualities you like to work with. I'll rephrase this another way. How many shots do you usually use or like out of the many shots that you may have taken? On a roll of 24 I may find 1 or two shots that really strike me. Sometimes I won't be happy with any of the shots I took and wonder why I took it.

-- (moschika@sirius.com), January 26, 1998

Answers

This is a good question. Personally I am about the same as you where I will only really like about 1 shot per roll and perhaps there will be another 2 that I will print. I have had periods where I won't like anything but usually if I go back much later when I am in a more accepting frame of mind I will be able to find one. I hear that 1 winner per roll is common for even the best photographers, of course this will all depend on what you consider a winner. I know of a few photographers who love just about everything they shoot.

-- Andy Laycock (agl@intergate.bc.ca), January 26, 1998.

How many shots....

For me it has a few variables. I've gone on shoots and got nothing. Those are usually the ones that when I'm shooting it just doesn't "feel"right. But then there are others that I feel like I'm in the "zone" and can't take a bad shot. I actually get goosebumps when shooting and feeling like this. On those rolls most of the images are good. This is also a question on how we judge and achieve success. I believe practice is essential and taking images that are not "good" is a must for realizing what we really want in our artwork.

-- Chuck Baker (cbaker@skypub.com), January 27, 1998.

How many shots

If you get one or two good shots per roll, consider yourself quite lucky!! In working on my grad thesis, I had literally hundreds of negatives, of which 30 prints I considered good enough to be hung on the gallery wall. Taking the pictures is part of the learning process (which never ends!). Don't look at the ones you don't like as failures--instead use them as learning tools to study and improve upon. Film is cheap! Just keep on shooting!

-- Valerie Yaklin-Brown (dmbrowni@gte.net), January 27, 1998.

Here's a twist on the subject for you. I shoot large format, and for every one picture that I take, I probably set the camera up, or scope out different potential images ten or fifteen times before I expose a sheet of film. I wonder if you have ever thought about all of the images that you did not record on film, along with the ones that you did not use after you exposed the negative. It is very likely that your average is no where near the one in twenty four pictures that you take. Even after thirty years of photography, I still only use one or two of every twenty or thirty negatives that I expose. They all look so good in the field, too.....

-- Marv Thompson (mthompson@clinton.net), January 27, 1998.

I believe I read where Ansel said one or two masterpieces a year is excellent.

-- Dell Elzey (potog@mindspring.com), January 28, 1998.

Masterpieces

I would like to have just one or two of Adams' masterpieces in my life.

-- Andy Laycock (aglay@interchange.ubc.ca), January 28, 1998.

You are doing fine. One great image a week equals 52 a year. In ten years a library of over 500 great images is quite an accomplishment. Keep your standards high. You will learn a lot from the clunkers if you take the time to ask "Why didn't this work?", and then compare it to one that did and ask "Why did this WORK ?". Clunkers are only a waste of film if you don't learn from them.

-- Peter Thoshinsky (camerabug1@msn.com), February 05, 1998.

It depends a lot on what type of shooting you're doing. If I'm shooting a motorcycle race, two or three good shots out of a hundred isn't bad. If I'm taking portraits with medium-format, every third or fourth picture is good enough to sell; about 1 in 10 - 20 are really eye-catching. Of course, those that you look at years later and still think "Wow" are fewer and further between.

Mike

-- Mike Dixon (burmashave@compuserve.com), February 22, 1998.

I find that it really depends if I'm "experimenting" or not. Sometimes I am in front of what I absolutely know to be a good subject. For instance, infrared film, cliffs, trees, blue or partly cloudy sky is a real winning combination with me. I can really knock those off in decent weather with a high success rate.

But when the battleship Missouri was open to the public a few weekends this past January, I have a total of two B&W shots I like out of maybe twenty rolls of 120. I usually wound up going home, having the film developed, and then realising what went wrong or what I'd missed, and then headed out and did it again.

So are the other ones failures? Ummm, not really. Let's face it: the true failures are the ones I look at and say to myself, "What did I photograph?" From that, I didn't even convey the subject to me.

One of the things I have learned to do is what I call extended blinking. I look at the subject, close my eyes for a couple of seconds, and then open them. What jumps out? Anything? Photograph that. Nothing jumped out? Move on.

Another problem I have run into is: Does the picture tell anything? I found in the woods where a stream vanished into the ground, traveled underneath for about five yards, and came out under a tree. Boy, I tried to capture that. All of the pictures failed.

But further down the road was a pool with two streams splashing into it. Great subject, no failure.

Sometimes one part of the picture is where I focused my attention to the exclusion of all else. A large stream splashing through boulders looked good, but the developed photo showed that the boulders were too light. I'll go back with a bucket and splash water on the boulders to darken them before I shoot. (For that one I had used chrome. My bad.)

How can I get better photos? I have to stop and ponder a bit of what I am photographing, and take a good look at the ones which didn't quite turn out. (And I'm not going to give any more Techpan 25 to the local lab)

-- Brian C. Miller (a-bcmill@exchange.microsoft.com), June 18, 1998.