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It dawned on me today that digital may be making me sloppy. Back in the old day, I use to purchase 24 or 36 exposure rolls of film. I was much more selective before I pressed the shutter button. Now I take between 100-200 photos a day with the hopes of obtaining 3-4 keepers. For some things, like inflight birds and insects, I feel like this is a necessity.

What are your thoughts?

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Rick Cox
http://photo.net/photos/rrdjserv

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Interesting thought, Rick. I've wondered that a bit myself. I may be (used to be? still have the cameras, but don't use them) more selective with film, but I also think I'm more unwilling to re-shoot a scene. Instead, when shooting film (or working with old film shots), I'm more likely to try and salvage or work on a shot that's not everything it could have been when I took it. However, with digital, I get a better sense of that right away, so it is possible that the keepers turn out better quality.

That, and the histogram. It's the second best thing about digital photography.

But as far as numbers of shots, I definitely hit numbers with digital that I never would have touched with film.

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I like to think that even with digital, I think of composition, but the truth is, we all are able to see, compose and shoot much quicker with digital and the "compose" part has become slightly less critical with more megapixels as post processing crops can often optimize horizon, etc.

My biggest concern with being too click happy is in sorting through all of the images to find those few that I plan to further process.

Would I shoot less with film - yes, would I get as many great shots with film - no, and that is partially due to the high volume of shot variants I can now click off in those few golden hours of the day.

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Buddy

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer. - Ansel Adams

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I do shoot way more digital than film but it's because it's so much cheaper. I'm absolutely always looking at my composition, but with digital I can see what I like and don't like and try again. I don't discard a ton at the time - unless it's really out of focus or badly exposed (getting less frequent). Instead, I use digital to give me options - do one horizontal, do one vertical, shoot low, shoot high. So now instead of one good shot of one subject that I might get on film, I have 5 variations - all good - all different - and all with something to redeem themselves. I'm one of those few photographers who still gets 4x6's printed and, since the age of digital, my albums are bursting at the seams with quality shots instead of snaps. I've recently started shooting weddings and family portraits - digital is wonderful for seeing which moments you've captured well and allows you to go back and see which moments you need to capture. It's hard to see on film that somebody was a 'blinker', but with digital you know instantly. So, like anything, you can turn it into bad habits, or you can work with it and make it the best experience possible.

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Suzan...
www.photoswithfinesse.com

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