How many photos will I take in Alaska

[GUT2407]

Dave, appreciate your recommendation about SanDisk Extreme Pro Cards.

 

Keith

 

 

I 2nd that recommendation, but add that I have also used the San Disk Ultra and have been very happy with them.

[pierces]

I 2nd that recommendation, but add that I have also used the San Disk Ultra and have been very happy with them.

 

I concur. The Ultras are more than fast enough for nearly any camera and are just as reliable when purchased from a reputable dealer (counterfeits on eBay are a problem). My choice of the Extreme Pros is purely driven by impatience while downloading. :)

 

Dave

[havoc315]

Pray and spray or is to spray and pray.. for Sports, BIF sure makes sense to have hundred if not thousands that is the nature of that action. For whale breaches... huh... We talking just holding down the shutter button for the whole time?

 

I can see taken 5-10 shots while I sail into glacier bay, a 10-20 shot burst for calving, maybe a 10 shot sequence of eagle in flight. But unless you are going for that iconic salmon jumping into the mouth of a bear or diving eagle scoring a salmon. I also am skeptical of those that wear some badge of coming home with tens of thousands of shots. It does take thousand if not tens of thousand but not likely in one sitting to get that picture but over many years. It is misguided for photographers or aspiring ones to think thousands on a single Alaskan, get the storage and the image will happen. Not going to happen IMHO. Everytime I go out to shoot I and come back I realize what is required is not more spray and pray!

 

Shooting for McDonalds and needs thousands to yield a few .. hmm, I think McDonalds might be able to find a "smarter" photographer. McDonalds how hard is food or advertising... I have a lot to learn...:rolleyes:

 

 

 

I debated adding my comments, not a flame, just an observations. If someone asks, I usually underestimate or defer sharing how much I shoot, and why does that matter to anyone? Who wants to brag about how many lame shots to get that one random good one. Means there was no skill just random luck :p

 

Wasn't the first poster talking number of shots, not the more general comment about how much "memory" one needs?

 

Back in the days of film --- Not that long ago -- Nobody, not professional, not amatuer, could really think of shooting "thousands" of images on a trip.

 

Film was 24 shots to a roll. It was expensive to buy, expensive to develop. And not like you could choose to only develop the good shots.

 

Most I ever took in a vacation with film, maybe 100-150 shots in a week.

 

Digital opened up nearly unlimited shooting. Pop in another cheap memory card, and capture another 1,000 images. Can print 1 out of 1,000, or print none and just share on facebook.

 

The extra latitude is helpful -- When shooting that bird in flight or whale, you can take a burst of 10 shots, and then keep the best one.

Even taking landscapes, you can get a couple attempts to make sure the focus and exposure are just right, you can experiment with different angles.

 

But this all means the photographer must also use editorial discretion. There is no reason to take 200 shots of the same sunset, standing in nearly the same spot. You only need so many shots of your kids, "look at me and smile" shots.

 

I'm often guilty myself.

 

In the end, if you come back from a week vacation with 5,000-10,000 shots... even if you are a jpeg shooter, you are in an organizing and editing nightmare.

 

My *hope* is to return from Alaska with around 2,000 shots. That's still too many, especially since I shoot all in raw. But it's a 10 day trip for me, so I'm hoping to keep it to about 200 shots per day. Some excursion days will be heavier, some ship days should be lighter.

 

I suspect I'll load the 2,000 shots into lightoom and give them a quick flip through. Flag 100-200 shots that really standout (hopefully). Flag another 300 don't-delete shots. And then delete the other 1500. I don't need my harddrive filled with 1500 mediocre or repetitive shots.

 

In the end, I hope out of the 2,000... I get 5-10 that would look great in a large frame. I'll pick 1 or 2 out of those, to actually print large.

 

I may do a "vacation book" with another 30-40 shots. 100-200 shots for a flickr album.

[peety3]

Keep in mind that my numbers of 15,000 images is for two people, not one. My wife and I are both avid photographers, though I tend to have more theoretical and actual frames/sec in my hand than her and therefore probably come home with more shots than her. We also have different lens selection strategies, so there can be a neat perspective to mix/match shots of the same thing through different lenses.

 

On the last cruise, we built separate Lightroom catalogs per day/excursion. I now use a very subtractive ranking method: select all, give them all 5 stars, then enable filters and filter down to only pictures with 5 stars. A quick run through and total setup shots get 0 stars, blurry shots get 1 star, and "eh" shots get 2 stars (now I don't see any of them). On second run-through, some quick back-and-forth comparison and anything not as good as an adjacent shot gets 3 stars. I might do some broad-stroke editing en masse at this stage, to uncover a little more detail (or lack thereof) per shot. One last pass and anything that doesn't make the cut gets 4 stars. Our last cruise took <10 hours total to whittle from 15,000 to 409, with editing included, and we had them posted within a week I think.

[zqvol]

I laugh at the number of shots some people claim to take, especially those that shoot RAW. If you are a pro and have thousands of hours to edit pics have at it, but the truth is (whether a few posters want to believe it or not) that most people on these boards are rank amateurs who shot jpeg and are very pleased with their results. They neither have the time, nor the inclination to edit images that are shot in RAW.

[peety3]

I laugh at the number of shots some people claim to take, especially those that shoot RAW. If you are a pro and have thousands of hours to edit pics have at it, but the truth is (whether a few posters want to believe it or not) that most people on these boards are rank amateurs who shot jpeg and are very pleased with their results. They neither have the time, nor the inclination to edit images that are shot in RAW.

15k in RAW, <425 "keepers", 10 hours sitting in front of the computer.

[pierces]

I laugh at the number of shots some people claim to take, especially those that shoot RAW. If you are a pro and have thousands of hours to edit pics have at it, but the truth is (whether a few posters want to believe it or not) that most people on these boards are rank amateurs who shot jpeg and are very pleased with their results. They neither have the time, nor the inclination to edit images that are shot in RAW.

 

To be fair, the folks on this particular forum probably shoot vastly larger volume than the typical traveler, most importantly because it is dedicated specifically to photography. Even with that being the case, the range of passion for shooting covers the gamut from thousands per trip to a thousand in a lifetime.

 

You did hit an important point that I felt worth highlighting. Whether a traveling photographer has 50 lbs worth of gear or an phone, shoots JPEG or RAW, 10,000 shots or 50, the important thing is that they are very pleased with their results. This forum has many experienced contributors and cruisers at any level of experience come here and are greeted with patience and an enthusiasm to help them get those pleasing results.

 

A small niggle is the myth that only "rank amateurs" shoot JPEG, making RAW a mystical photographic elixir that only "Pros" can use to fix any photo. Many pros shoot JPEG with superb results and with the advent of programs like Lightroom (and even Picasa), RAW files can be processed by newbies with very little self-education and in the case of Lightroom, the same workflow as JPEG.

 

It may occasionally seem that some here are engaging in photographic fish tales and gear-timidation but it is by far the most pleasant, newbie-friendly photo forum I have ever visited.

 

Dave

Edited July 8, 2015 by pierces

[peety3]

A brief (ok, probably not so brief) aside on why I keep everything. I read a great article about "the photographer's memory" of what you see in the viewfinder after the mirror drops and you know the shot is done. Dirck Halstead wrote about the classic shot he took of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky (http://dirckhalstead.net/wp-content/themes/modularity3/images/slideshow/image7.jpg) and how it was taken when he was under contract with some organization that I can't remember, perhaps TIME magazine. EVERYTHING that he shot went to TIME, and was theirs to use for a period of 18 months. When the scandal broke, Dirck knew that he had "that shot", and had to send an intern to search his archives for perhaps three days to find it. Once found, it was a very recognizable reflection on what had gone on in the past.

 

Prior to the scandal, it was "just another shot". After the scandal broke, it was a key image. I keep everything, in the hopes of digging out just one key image. :)

[GUT2407]

Back in the days of film --- Not that long ago -- Nobody, not professional, not amatuer, could really think of shooting "thousands" of images on a trip.

 

Film was 24 shots to a roll. It was expensive to buy, expensive to develop. And not like you could choose to only develop the good shots.

 

Most I ever took in a vacation with film, maybe 100-150 shots in a week.

 

Digital opened up nearly unlimited shooting. Pop in another cheap memory card, and capture another 1,000 images. Can print 1 out of 1,000, or print none and just share on facebook.

 

The extra latitude is helpful -- When shooting that bird in flight or whale, you can take a burst of 10 shots, and then keep the best one.

Even taking landscapes, you can get a couple attempts to make sure the focus and exposure are just right, you can experiment with different angles.

 

But this all means the photographer must also use editorial discretion. There is no reason to take 200 shots of the same sunset, standing in nearly the same spot. You only need so many shots of your kids, "look at me and smile" shots.

 

I'm often guilty myself.

 

In the end, if you come back from a week vacation with 5,000-10,000 shots... even if you are a jpeg shooter, you are in an organizing and editing nightmare.

 

My *hope* is to return from Alaska with around 2,000 shots. That's still too many, especially since I shoot all in raw. But it's a 10 day trip for me, so I'm hoping to keep it to about 200 shots per day. Some excursion days will be heavier, some ship days should be lighter.

 

I suspect I'll load the 2,000 shots into lightoom and give them a quick flip through. Flag 100-200 shots that really standout (hopefully). Flag another 300 don't-delete shots. And then delete the other 1500. I don't need my harddrive filled with 1500 mediocre or repetitive shots.

 

In the end, I hope out of the 2,000... I get 5-10 that would look great in a large frame. I'll pick 1 or 2 out of those, to actually print large.

 

I may do a "vacation book" with another 30-40 shots. 100-200 shots for a flickr album.

 

 

That is where digital excels. The cost per shot.

[GUT2407]

A brief (ok, probably not so brief) aside on why I keep everything. I read a great article about "the photographer's memory" of what you see in the viewfinder after the mirror drops and you know the shot is done. Dirck Halstead wrote about the classic shot he took of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky (http://dirckhalstead.net/wp-content/themes/modularity3/images/slideshow/image7.jpg) and how it was taken when he was under contract with some organization that I can't remember, perhaps TIME magazine. EVERYTHING that he shot went to TIME, and was theirs to use for a period of 18 months. When the scandal broke, Dirck knew that he had "that shot", and had to send an intern to search his archives for perhaps three days to find it. Once found, it was a very recognizable reflection on what had gone on in the past.

 

Prior to the scandal, it was "just another shot". After the scandal broke, it was a key image. I keep everything, in the hopes of digging out just one key image. :)

 

 

May I ad one more reson I have seen widows and widowers weep over photos that were total rubish because their loved one was in the background.