What is your 'Ratio'?

[THXGEEK]

I had some spare time today and wandered down to my local wildlife watering hole (aka the 'suburban water retention pond').

After a vast expenditure of photons and electrons, I have a few pics that I deemed 'worthy' of processing and potential sharing with family, friends and community. Most of my pics basically really 'suck' for all of the reasons we all experience. Out of focus. Too much noise. Can't be cropped properly. It just isn't 'right'. And so on...

So. My question is: What is your ratio of pics taken to pics that you are willing to process/share?

After very careful consideration, my average ratio is at least 100:1. (That ratio is considerable higher for my newer platforms - still getting to know my Fuji camera)

What about you?

 

[Photofarmer]

My friends and family easily pleased......

 

[Dean Wilson]

Here is a typical (?) example. A trip to a costal town for three days I took 105 photos and came away with four photos that are "okay".

So, my grade (ratio) would be 101 wrong answers out of 105 questions: a solid F in school. 4/105th or 3.84%, so that would be about 1% a day.

Nothing fancy, but family and friends like them.

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[ShipleyNW]

On average, I'd say 10% of my images make it through the first cull, and maybe half of those make it all the way through to "presentation" status. Throw those numbers out the window when I'm shooting bursts of more than 3 FPS. I've got gear that will shoot 30 FPS, and that's just stupid. If I'm out shooting birds at an even more conservative 10 FPS I can come back with several thousand images that cull down into the single digits, pushing my hit rate well below 1%.

But, as I tell my wife, once you have the camera up to your eye, pushing the button is free.* Go ahead and work the scene until you're sure you've corralled the composition. Nothing worse than getting home and finding a flaw that can't be fixed in post, but could have been fixed by reframing from one step to the left at the scene.

The real hit to my ratio comes from scenes that might look almost promising but where I just can't find the picture in the scene. That happens a lot on bad light days. I figure, if I can just work this hard enough I can find an angle or technique or exposure that will pull this scene together. Fifty frames later, nope. Fifty first-cull rejects.
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* Free except for cull time, which can be enormous.

 

[NGauger101010]

A friend and I were working on this very thing with film in the 70's. We took a lot of photos between the 2 of us.
We worked out a loose formula by experience.

For every 36 exposure roll, you get an average of 3 really good shots worth sharing.
For every 3 rolls (108) you get 1 picture that you can be proud of.
For every 5 rolls (150) you get=1 or 2 pictures that are worth framing.

The reasons are the same as outlined by THXGEEK
"Out of focus. Too much noise. Can't be cropped properly. It just isn't 'right'. And so on..."
My main reason for not liking them is; it looked great in the viewfinder, now on the computer.. not so much

Needless to say, Digital has saved me a lot of film

 

[esheato]

Interesting question, and I find it even more interesting that NGauger went with film because that was my first thought too.

Digitally speaking, I shot another airshow yesterday with the RF, and came home with 4500 shots. Whittled it down to 37 on the first pass that warrant further review and I'll probably end up with 10 or less that I really like (and will be shared here). When it comes to my kiddo, my keeper ratio depends on him and his willingness to give me good looks that day or not!

On a 36 shot film roll, I'm much much more selective on what I shoot, so I think my keeper ratio goes up, but on a good roll, I'm finding myself happy with 18 or so. Print worthy? Much less often.

 

[BasilFawlty]

I've never done an actual calculation, but anecdotally I think it depends on the genre I'm shooting. If I'm shooting landscapes or milky way scenes, I am putting in a lot more time and thought into each shot so that my "keeper" rate is pretty high (not 100% certainly, but better than 50%).

If, on the other hand, I'm shooting birds or wild life, like at Bosque Del Apache, my keeper rate is much lower. This is because I'm shooting many more images and not always able to take a lot of time to "plan" the shots. If I see a bunch of Sandhill Cranes coming in for a landing, I just start shoting and, if I'm lucky, I will have one or two that are decent enough to work with in post.

 

[Only RF]

Yeah I'm somewhere in that area. 1 out of 100. When I go to Portugal for 2 months (10 weeks in 2026) I'm happy if I come home with 20-30 shots I consider very good for my level of shooting. I get a good keeper rate but out of those which are the ones I'll actually post.

I use Canon DPP to pre-cull before importing files into LrC. Not too many OOF shots get past that. If one does it has to be pretty special and then I'll run that shot through Topaz Sharpen AI. Something I'm trying to maintain is if I didn't get it in the field it doesn't count. While I'm not against it I have never replaced a sky and never will but I will work the heck out of if it is a B&W. Clouds are my friends.

I also said I'd never use the distraction removal tools. If there is a twig in front of a bird I'll have to do better next time. I do walk around and wait for a better shot. The tech is so good these days I have caught myself doing that occasionally but I still try and get it in the field. Next time when we travel I'm going to try people removal tool.

Here is a quick example. I needed a shot of this room but there was a long baseboard heater (that I'm replacing) in the way and I didn't feel like moving it.

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One swipe and Generative AI took seconds to remove it. 5 years ago I would have spent hours on it and likely would had given up. A few of my shots on the walls.

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