Burst Mode FPS - Mirrorless System

[Focus101]

I love it and I hate it at times. Twice a year, I shoot a dance performance for an organization. I use the R5 for that shoot. I shoot 1st curtain with EF 70-200 f2.8 II. The shoot usually last 3 days, about an hour and 15 minutes with about 120 - 140 dance members. I kept telling my self to quit pressing that shutter release button that long. It seems that every time I shoot this event, my total number of shots keeps going up. No self discipline!?! Last shoot in January, I ended up with almost 20K shots for a 3 day shoot. Took me months to cull those pictures. That is the part I hate - Too many photos to cull or choose from. Take up too much storage space and I am bad at deleting pictures unless they are out of focus.
Burst mode High FPS - Love that I can usually get the action shots. Hate that, I have way too many to cull!


In the past with my 5D2, I usually shoot about 1K shots a night and even if I get crazy, it would still be about 1,500.
These mirrorless cameras are just too good.
(Edit: In all fairness, before 2020, there weren't that many dancers, probably about 70-80)
Do you guys have this type of problem?
How do you deal with it?

 

[tpatana]

I've been honing my culling skills especially since I got R5. Photo Mechanic is pretty good for that. First I was skeptical but now I use it always.

Last weekend took 5k pics during 10h show, posted 927 edited pictures ~2.5 hours after coming home. LR AI masks are lifesaver for that kind of shoots where the subject doesn't change too much. Will post few from that show on it's own thread.

 

[Focus101]

I've been honing my culling skills especially since I got R5. Photo Mechanic is pretty good for that. First I was skeptical but now I use it always.

Last weekend took 5k pics during 10h show, posted 927 edited pictures ~2.5 hours after coming home. LR AI masks are lifesaver for that kind of shoots where the subject doesn't change too much. Will post few from that show on it's own thread.

I use LR to cull and edit but with dance performances, light is all over the place. Nowadays with LED stage lights, they’re can be very bad and unrecoverable blown highlights. Plus I have a full time job, I only got an hour or so when I am home. I work in IT, so many days by the time I get home, I don’t want to look at another computer screens.

 

[tpatana]

I use LR to cull and edit but with dance performances, light is all over the place. Nowadays with LED stage lights, they’re can be very bad and unrecoverable blown highlights. Plus I have a full time job, I only got an hour or so when I am home. I work in IT, so many days by the time I get home, I don’t want to look at another computer screens.

I work full time IT too

That's one reason I bought Photo Mechanic. Most of my sport shoots are 4k-10k pics and using PM vs LR saves me at least 50% of the culling time, which is easily 1-3 hours per shoot. So being short on time for photo editing, PM makes it faster for me. Time is valuable.

But for years I was happy with LR too, so if that works for you then no reason to swap.

 

[Focus101]

I work full time IT too

That's one reason I bought Photo Mechanic. Most of my sport shoots are 4k-10k pics and using PM vs LR saves me at least 50% of the culling time, which is easily 1-3 hours per shoot. So being short on time for photo editing, PM makes it faster for me. Time is valuable.

But for years I was happy with LR too, so if that works for you then no reason to swap.

I have the dance shoot coming up in 2 weeks. I'm going to start researching it. A friend of mine used it before but switch to LR and he likes LR better.

 

[tpatana]

I have the dance shoot coming up in 2 weeks. I'm going to start researching it. A friend of mine used it before but switch to LR and he likes LR better.

I think they have free 14 (or 30?) day trial license. I did that first, then went back to LR and maybe 6 months later bought PM. Worth trying maybe. LR has lot of good things too, especially if I see something I need immediately out it's just click click export and you're good.

Another interesting that has happened me since getting PM. Earlier I have saved literally every picture, like zero delete. And I even duplicate everything. So for past 10+ years, I have every picture on 2 different hard drives (I have tall stack of USB drives in my shelf), ballpark 500k pics doubled so 1M give or take.

Now with PM, assuming it's not proper photoshoot where I have to be able to pull more pics, I just plug in memory card to reader, go through with PM and only copy selected pics to hard drive. Saves me 80-90% of the HDD space. First I was feeling bad in case someone asks for more pics, but now I've just started saying "sorry those were the good ones of you" as I don't have the pics anymore. For real shoots I still copy everything and duplicate.

Also not related to PM but to R5, sport shoots I started doing jpeg instead of raw. The NR in-body seems better than LR NR so usually you get better with jpeg even though you lose some editing room. I heard good things about the new LR AI-NR so I might try that, unfortunate part is that it only works on RAW and I was kinda liking the pics not taking as much space and faster processing/editing too.

 

[Focus101]

I think they have free 14 (or 30?) day trial license. I did that first, then went back to LR and maybe 6 months later bought PM. Worth trying maybe. LR has lot of good things too, especially if I see something I need immediately out it's just click click export and you're good.

Another interesting that has happened me since getting PM. Earlier I have saved literally every picture, like zero delete. And I even duplicate everything. So for past 10+ years, I have every picture on 2 different hard drives (I have tall stack of USB drives in my shelf), ballpark 500k pics doubled so 1M give or take.

Now with PM, assuming it's not proper photoshoot where I have to be able to pull more pics, I just plug in memory card to reader, go through with PM and only copy selected pics to hard drive. Saves me 80-90% of the HDD space. First I was feeling bad in case someone asks for more pics, but now I've just started saying "sorry those were the good ones of you" as I don't have the pics anymore. For real shoots I still copy everything and duplicate.

Also not related to PM but to R5, sport shoots I started doing jpeg instead of raw. The NR in-body seems better than LR NR so usually you get better with jpeg even though you lose some editing room. I heard good things about the new LR AI-NR so I might try that, unfortunate part is that it only works on RAW and I was kinda liking the pics not taking as much space and faster processing/editing too.

Yes, they have free 30 day trial. I plan on download a trial next week when I have time to mess with it. I have an external RAID 5 storage - 18TB. Don't know how many pictures I have. I have several external harddrive that were use to backup photos but with the RAID 5, I didn't have to backup quite as often.

 

[Only RF]

Not sure how much this will help but I use Canon's DPP - Quick Check - Full screen to delete unwanted files before importing to LrC. Select all files and press X to reject as scrolling through. When done exit fill screen and out of Quick Check. Edit - Rating - Select rejected images only. Then File - Move to Trash. Quick Check shows the files as finished Jpegs and DPP's downsizing algorithm for fit to screen display is very good. Files looks sharp.

I'm sure PM is better suited and if time was an issue for me I'd look into it. As a hobbyist I have the time. Still no fun with these high FPS cameras but I find pre-culling easier in DPP.

 

[Focus101]

Not sure how much this will help but I use Canon's DPP - Quick Check - Full screen to delete unwanted files before importing to LrC. Select all files and press X to reject as scrolling through. When done exit fill screen and out of Quick Check. Edit - Rating - Select rejected images only. Then File - Move to Trash. Quick Check shows the files as finished Jpegs and DPP's downsizing algorithm for fit to screen display is very good. Files looks sharp.

I'm sure PM is better suited and if time was an issue for me I'd look into it. As a hobbyist I have the time. Still no fun with these high FPS cameras but I find pre-culling easier in DPP.

Yeah, I use DPP for quick check and rating but I moved to LR last year, as I find that I can do rating in LR faster and then delete the 0 ratings

 

[GaryM]

DPP for me as well. Basically the same as “OnlyRF“. Quickly review and make keepers a number 5.
Then invert selections. Send non-inverted to trash and import 5‘s to Lightroom. Of course it is not very effected if you don’t cull any. I do understand that issue with these new canon mirror less cameras. They really are that good!

 

[Focus101]

Canon R5, (and other models) It is "too good" that I get so many similar shots with very little differences between two sequential shots. Then I have to spend time trying to figure out which one is worth saving and editing.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

As Mr. Miyagi told the Karate Kid, "You need discipline!"

And by that I don't mean with the shutter button, because you can never revel in the shot you didn't take. But you also don't want to have to live in a hoarder's house maneuvering around all the stuff you're saving just in case.

Similar to advice above, I use Photo Mechanic to pour through the the initial set of raw files and mark the probables. Everything else gets tossed. I look at things differently depending if I'm just shooting or if I'm shooting for something in particular. If I'm shooting for something in particular I ask myself, "How many shots do I need?", and after the first cut I go through again and whittle it down to about 3-4x what I need, keeping only the best. If I don't know what I need then I'm a little less selective. I use the rating system putting 1 star on keepers and 2 stars on anything that immediately pops. Then I suck those into Lightroom, wipe out the rating, and do it again. If I have similar shots I rate and flag, then A/B them. Once again 1 star for a keeper, 2 stars for a definite. I then process the 2 stars. If I have enough for the shoot, I'm done. I may then go back through the 1's and unstar and delete those that are redundant (close to something I've got), but the rest I'll hold onto just in case.

I've come back from a shoot with thousands of images that quickly get reduced to a couple hundred so I can wind up with 15-40 depending. It can be tedious to go through 100+ images of a moment, but when one captures the precise split-second image you want it's worth the cost of the film.

 

[RedCobra]

In LrC, I use the x and p and the right arrow on the keyboard to quickly scan every photo then delete the rejected ones.
It's nice to be retired and have the time to leisurely review all the photos and only mark the OOF ones for removal in LrC. LOL.
And yeah I keep everything that's not OOF forever. Took me 3 months to review and process the photos I brought back from my last Safari.
I's a hobby. Enjoy it. YMMV.

 

[Chris Summers]

I do the same thing. Last night I went through 650 shots from my granddaughter's soccer game. After culling I had 180. Then I do a second review and crop and make exposure adjustments, etc. Goes quite fast. Now if I am doing something like images from a trip somewhere I take a bit more time.

 

[Focus101]

I am sticking with LR, because I am so use to the process. I still use the DPP if I have pre-shoot burst mode enable or other type of files that require Canon DPP.