Ratio of keepers to total shots

[Hockeyshots]

I'm curious. When you guys (and gals) shoot a fast paced sporting event (basketball, ice hockey, etc.) what's your ratio of keepers to total shots taken? I was just going through one of my event directories and pretty much had a 1:5 ratio of keepers to non-keepers.

I shoot indoors, and some of the arenas have good lighting and clean glass, and some are pretty dull and dirty. I don't use any flash at all. High ISO. And my lens isn't as fast (f/4 - f/5.6) as the one I have my eye on (f/2.8).

Is this a normal ratio (1:5), or does it seem a bit on the high side to you?

Also, I work with raw files and right now I keep everything...even the ones that are absolutely useless. Do you guys keep everything or toss the stuff you don't use.

Thanks. HS

[jorgemonkey]

For the percentage varies. I shot a college ice hockey game, and ended up keeping around 80% of them, and while shooting an outdoor soccer game during the day I probably kept around 40% of them. I guess as long as I can get "That one shot" I'm doing ok.

[masdog]

What do you define as a keeper?

Normally, I can get about 1-2 Great shots per event and about 3 out of every 10 are printable.

I don't keep shots that are completely unusable. If its out of focus or if there are spectators or other players blocking most of the action, it goes to my recycle bin. Everything else, even if it is of marginal quality, is kept because you never know when you're gonne need a shot of a player.

I wouldn't worry about the shots being dull. I still get a lot "dull" images when shooting hockey because the lighting varies at each end of the rink. There isn't much you can really do about this as Hockey moves too quickly to change settings on the fly. Photoshop can correct some of this using a levels or curves adjustment.

[Old Timer]

Yeah I think you have to define keeper. Each of us will have a different definition. I only can the ones that are totally out of focus or have ref stepping in front of me something like that. The rest I keep in one way or another. I will at a normal basketball game post about 60 to 70% of the rest on my web site for possible sale. In reality I go looking for those 2 to 6 shots from an event that I would call keepers. These are the ones that I would print or would want others to see to judge my work.

[Hockeyshots]

Thank you all for your responses. Hopefully there wil be a few more.

As each has said, keeper is defined by the photographer. I may keep something you wouldn't, and vice versa. I could probably "publish", as in make available to someone on a website, maybe 50% of the shots right now. However, I tend to only make available 1 out of every 5 or 6, somewhere around 20%. Sounds like that's ball park for what most of you are "keeping", and that's kind of what I was looking for.

Thanks again. HS

[SmartWombat]

I'd agree. Even if every photo is technically correct (and they won't be with variable lighting) there's spectators, closed eyes, action going just out of the frame, cut off hands, heads, or feet ... lots of things that can go wrong.

I usually cut it down to 1 in 10 best shots, from about 30-70% success, depending on lots of things.
Practice for one If it's the first race of the season, or I've had a long gap between races, then my panning is usually off and I get less keepers at slow shutter speeds.

[JSPhoto]

Hockey is a bit tougher to shoot than most things and my keepers from hockey goes way down compared to anything else I shoot. Mostly due to the glass where I shoot which is pretty old, scratched and hazy.
I do not keep bad shots that are out of focus or the flash didn't fire as it takes up too much drive space. Which reminds me, I need to clean off 4 drives of junk as I am running out of space.....of course taking 1500 photos at 8.2mp yesterday didn't help matters
I may not be working much this week but I will be cleaning drives off!

JS

[Hockeyshots]

...taking 1500 photos at 8.2mp yesterday...

That's a lot of shooting! Reminds me of a conversation I had with a hockey dad last week. He wants to but a DSLR and we were talking about fps with today's AF digitals. He was joking about just pointing the camera at the game on the ice and holding the shutter button down and shooting the whole game. I read your comment and had a nice chuckle.

HS

[JSPhoto]

I have been told several times by numerous people that if they want to know how a race or sports event went lap by lap or quarter by quarter to just ask me to shoot it and you'll know. I used to over shoot things. This past weekend though I went a bit crazy. I shot 600+ at gymnastics because it was the only meet I have shot all year and the coach wasn't happy with me , then I just had a good time at the motocross and got carried away

JS

[masdog]

Sometimes, an image where the subject has their eyes closed can be better than an image where the eyes are open.

[Lava Lamp]

The keeper ratio is something I think about from time to time, too. I just shot a high school baseball game and took 320 photos. I went through and cut out less than a dozen (<5%) where the subject was out of focus or blurry. Then I went back through and deleted the really bad exposures (again <5%) and all the ones where a back was turned at the wront moment or somebody's arm was in the way, etc. Then I cut out all the boring ones and the duplicate-type shots. I ended up with 145 that I gave to the team. Of those, I think 16 are portfolio quality (5% OR 1:20.)

I did a youth league basketball game this weekend and took about 250 shots. I cut those to 45 for the team and maybe one or to might make it into the portfolio. .5% or 1:250.