What is your C2G (Crap-to-Gold) ratio?

WillCAD

I'm always embarassed, and often frustrated, at how many flubs I have vs how many keepers. Seems like my C2G ratio is about 20:1, what with overexposed, underexposed, forgot to reset the ISO or WB, had flash comp set to 2 stops when 1 was enough, motion blur, bad composition... the list is endless!

I don't delete the crap, so I have a pretty good idea of the ratio; my attitude is that you learn as much from your mistakes as you do from your successes. It's gotten a little better as I've become more experienced, but it still seems pretty high to me.

I'm curious to know if my C2G ratio is way high, or fairly typical. I see an awful lot of great galleries here that don't seem to have any flubs, or darn few, and I just want to know if I'm doing better than the average Uncle Bob.

BradfordBenn

I have been looking at my C2G ratio recently. I was more just amazed at how much mine has changed over the past year. When I was in Lost Wages (Las Vegas) last December, my C2G was about 100:1, in April in Minneapolis my ratio (including work photos and the field trip with Grimace) was about 25:1, this past weekend for the Worldwide Photowalk it was exactly 16:1. 400 images, 25 ones I consider keepers/fixable. The trend of C2G is improving I think that is more important than the actual number.

Art Scott

I agree withBradfordBen...it is more important to see the ratio change for the better than the actual ratio


Do you shoot with an assistant??
I come from the film ERA and when my client (the studio i contracted with) handed me 2 pro packs of film (10 rolls - 12 exp each) you did not have much room for flubs...I did carry 2 rolls just incase i got into trouble but my normal wedding consisted of 120 shots on 2 1/4 film......I still shoot with the same scrutiny today.........with digital I see about 2 flubs to 10-15 images.......and the reason you don't see any "bad" shots in a folio , whether is is a print one or on line, is that you do not show those...only the BEST of the BEST is shown.......we know they happen but never advertise it......................

heatherfeather

That ratio really depends on so many variables.... how tricky the lighting is... how good the client is at following directions and how good looking they are...

Out of curiosity I just did a survey of some recent weddings...
4 to 1
4 to 1
4.5 to 1 (that was a very tricky bride)
3 to 1
3.5 to 1
3.5 to 1

I am kind of surprised. I thought my ratio was way worse than that.

ARKreations

heatherfeather wrote: »

I am kind of surprised. I thought my ratio was way worse than that.

After seeing the work you consistently post here - I'm not

heatherfeather

I thought I should add that I wouldn't call all the shots included in the keepers as "portfolio material". So my count should be called the keepers to tossers ratio. Tossers would include: redundancy, blinkers, exposure & comp errors... Keepers would include the photos that I gave the client: the gold, the storytellers and a very few that I reluctantly included out of necessity.

mmmatt

I haven't really ever figured that out. I shoot a lot of redundancy, I shoot a lot of long lens candids that have potential for someone walking in front of my camera, and I throw a lot of things away because I don't like the expression or if I am providing printed proofs then some go just because I don't want to spend $300 on the 4x6's. Will, if you are shooting 25x more crap than you are shooting potential keepers because of things you did wrong in-camera I would say you need to work on that ratio. Not trying to be mean or harsh, but throwing away that many because of issues that are IN your control is pretty poor. A professional should be closer to what Heather is quoting. Ultimately I give up about 2/3rds of what I shoot but I have reached a point in my abilities that I can use most of what I shoot outside of things I can't control. Certainly some are junk, and most are far from being portfolio pieces, but things like focus, exposure settings, flash comp and the like need to be things you can do 90% of the time in your sleep.

Again, not trying to be harsh or imply that I am all that... just saying!

Matt

Matthew Saville

At a wedding? 1000-2000 shots taken, 400-600 keepers.

As a total, I shoot as many as 100,000 images each year, and keep about 20,000...

=Matt=

Blurmore

For a 1000 image wedding, I usually have at least 40 that are utterly unprintable or beyond resuscitation. The number of actual "winner" shots is usually less than 20 and the rest are just photos. I think this calculation is highly variable between individuals, and extremely subjective.

Agnieszka

Yiikes. I give them pretty much all the photos, unless they're obviously out of focus, the expressions or angles are bad or its a double shot. Between my second and me we're taking around 3000-4000 photos each wedding (8h), and I'd say they usually get at leaaast 1800 ..... which explains my all nighters & rings under my eyes (yes, I have no life). But I think they usually have an opinion one way or the other. I once shot one of my friends and showed her the RAW image as I had absolutely no time to touch them all up .... anyway. It was surprising to see which ones SHE chose as her favorites, and I'd say she has generally a good taste. I don't think our clients expect all the shots to be outstanding - a candid of uncle Joe will make them happy too ... even if it doesn't mean anything to us

BradfordBenn

As I have been thinking about this question a little more, I think I might go back to my other view. Wayne Gretsky said it best, "You miss all the shots you don't take" (For those of you who don't know Gretsky was perhaps the greatest hockey player so far)