Hi guys..doing a poll here..

Normally, I get about 3-5 keepers out of 36.~10%

Its getting harder to find keepers as my requirement is raised.

Im happy just to have ONE very nice shot a week.

what about u guys? ;)

-- Travis koh (teckyy@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002

Answers

When I started out:

every shot... of my family, pets, rocks, the sky...

About 2 year ago:

5 shots in a 36 exp roll

Now:

1-2 shots in a 36 exp roll

Projected 1 year from now after the essay is completed and exhibited:

30 shots in 400-500 36 exp rolls.

Evolution

-- John (ouroboros_2001@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

You really have to define "success rate" to have meaningful answers. Recently, I shot six rolls of film of temples in notrhtern Thailand. Each roll had a lot of "good shots:" they were technically good but they looked like picture postcards. In fact, only 1 shot per roll, or 1 shot every other roll that interested me. I often end up printing this type of ratio. However, when I look at old film, I sometimes find a few years later shots that I first had not liked. Photopgraphy is an art of selection.

-- Mitch Alland (mitchalland@mac.com), March 17, 2002.

Success rate based upon "those shots u would enlarge and frame OR keep looking at" ;)

-- Travis koh (teckyy@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

I approve of about 1 shot in 10-36 frame rolls (this is a miesly 0.27% success rate). My friends and family think about half of the shots I take are keepers, and many of them want prints from that half. So the number depends on who you ask.

-- Matthew Geddert (geddert@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

One in ten is really pretty good. About one foot of film shows up in a movie for every ten feet shot (just an average--I read it in the American Cinematographer). That's about what I get, too. I'm hoping to improve it by looking more and being more selective before I press the button.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), March 17, 2002.

I get about one to two a year that I want to look at again and again. It may sound like I am a discriminating photographer but I am probably just an incompetent one

-- John Collier (jbcollier@powersurfr.com), March 17, 2002.

3-5 of one roll of film that i like and print. about 1 out odf every every 10 to 20 rolls that go into my portfolio

-- stefan randlkofer (geesbert@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

As an aside to this question, I often find myself not even tripping the shutter these days where I would have in the past, knowing the composition/subject matter/lighting isn't going to give me what I am after. This often leads me to move around for another angle or different framing, or just to move on without taking the shot. Even with my new sense of in camera editing, I still am happy if I even get several images on a roll that are "keepers".

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), March 17, 2002.

Depends who I'm shooting for. Family stuff - shots of the kid, relatives and the such - probably half go into a family album of snaps. For comission portraits I'm happy with a couple frames a roll, though the my clients usually think they're all great (c'mon I've been doing this 25 years, they should). For gallery exhibtion (the stuff that really counts to me) maybe one every shoot (wherein I shoot usually 3 or 4 rolls). I read once that (I think it was Ralph Gibson) if you get one or two shots you think are really, really good a year your doing well.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), March 17, 2002.

Travis,

Same rate as you. 10% or less.

-- David Smith (dssmith3@rmci.net), March 17, 2002.

Mitch Allen (see above) has an unusual approach. Apparently, he culls just after receiving his film back from processing - - - then, he keeps some of his culls for review much later. We shoot slides almost exclusively, and save the culls in separate files. Years later, we'll look at the culls and then discard what we still don't like. Except for immediate family "snapshots," we usually keep 3-5 from a 36 exposure roll. On the re-cull, we may keep 3-5 out of several hundred. Family "snapshots?" Don't ask! < grin >

-- George C. Berger (gberger@his.com), March 17, 2002.

For me, the "keeper rate" is really a function of the nature of the shoot, and what the end objective is. It is not, however, something I "stress" over - unless it starts to approach zero. ;-)

Sometimes you shoot freely, recognizing that you may, or may not, catch the expressions you want in the subject - this is often the case with a "free-flow" sort of shoot with a model, and a low "keeper rate" is expected. In other cases, much more consideration goes into each shot, so the "keeper rate" becomes very high.

In the free-flow mode, I might end up with about 1/3 of the shots being technically keepers, and then edit those down to one or two shots for the whole shoot. In the "more studied" mode, particularly if shooting the 4x5, most of the editing process actually takes place before the film is exposed, so the preliminary keeper rate goes way up - often close to 100%. Even then, however, the real keeper rate depends on the objective of the shoot. If that is a single shot, then that is what the preliminary keepers get edited to. If the objective is a series, then more of the preliminary, technically-correct shots get used.

-- Ralph Barker (rbarker@pacbell.net), March 17, 2002.

Me too, I'm often 1-2 per 36... but those are the ones I'd say are "okay". The ones I get enlarged and hang on the wall are less than 1 in a 100...

-- Michael Kastner (kastner@zedat.fu-berlin.de), March 17, 2002.

My keepers are based on what I feel will sell. My primary tool is 6x7 but I use an SL and SL2 as well. My keep rate for 35mm is probably 5% while my rate for 6x7 is between 30 and 40%. I guess I'm a lot more careful what I'm shooting in MF. I too have changed in what I felt was acceptable. I have unmounted many shots that I've done in the past as I find them so so today.

-- Steve Rasmussen (srasmuss@flash.net), March 17, 2002.

Isn't this the same old "who can piss the furthest question?" Are we being rated by the high number of "keeper" or the low number?

-- Glenn Travis (leicaddict@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

No Glen, this is NOT a competition. I myself am finding harder to release the shutter nowadays knowing that most shots would not be what I wanted.

Are there any 5-film-per-roll by any brand btw? ;))

-- Travis koh (teckyy@hotmail.com), March 17, 2002.

Another variation of this question might be how many shots of one subject do you take, and out of those how many are any good? I am not one of those who shoots a whole roll of just one subject - perhaps five to six frames of each subject, sometimes only one or two. Out of 36 exposures, I am disappointed if I do not have four to five I am quite pleased with. Really pleased, competition stuff, far far fewer.

-- David Killick (dalex@inet.net.nz), March 18, 2002.

I get 0 keepers per roll ... but then, I'm a perfectioninst! ;-)

-- Ray Moth (ray_moth@yahoo.com), March 19, 2002.

I have to bring up the old Ansel Adams story, paraphrased as "If you work hard all year, and end up with twelve good pictures, you've had a good year". It's true. Measuring "success" by the roll will lead nowhere. Think by subject, or project, or series, over a longer period. Don't be afraid to use film, edit fearlessly, don't count the throwaway, only show the good ones.

-- Mark Sampson (MSampson45@aol.com), March 22, 2002.

I have to bring up the old Ansel Adams story, paraphrased as "If you work hard all year, and end up with twelve good pictures, you've had a good year".

I always figured that meant he wasn't very good.

-- Jeff Spirer (jeff@spirer.com), March 22, 2002.

I shoot strictly for fun, and I never have any blown up beyond the 4X6 prints I get back from the lab. I probably will be getting a film scanner and printer in a year or two. I'll have a lot of catching up to do. My criteria for keepers is if I feel it is good enough to be posted on photo.net, thats it. My ratio is about 1 or 2 "keepers" per roll. Occasionally none per roll.

-- Gerry Widen (gwiden@alliancepartners.org), March 22, 2002.