Canon: $550 of Photos in 3 Hours

In the “good old days”, we are talking the 1970s, I was saving every penny to buy film. The standard was either black and white or Kodachrome. When I could afford it, I would use Kodachrome 64. I'd save all my pennies and buy 5 to 10 rolls of Kodachrome at a time. The Kodachrome films were different from every other film. I was not only buying the film, but I was also buying the processing. My cost was around $23 for a film of 36. I would often stretch it to 37 frames and on few occasions 38 frames.

Lady photographing Sandhill CranesLady photographing Sandhill Cranes at Reifel Bird Sanctuaryreifel-20110219-0003.jpg — Copyright © 2011 Syv Ritch: http://www.foto-biz.com/usageterms

Female Photographer at Work with Sandhill Cranes at Reifel Bird Sanctuary click on image for gallery

I haven't decided yet if I want to to remove the duck at the bottom left. It would be cleaner by removing it, but I don't know why, to me it adds to the action.

On Saturday, I took 865 photos! Yep! Eight hundred and sixty five photos in less than 3 hours. It moves, I shoot. Not really, but when I find something, I keep on firing. At 7 frames per second, a 32 Gb memory card 400x and a battery that last forever, it goes quickly.

2 years ago, I couldn't do that!

  1. I only had 8 Gb memory cards.
  2. The camera could only keep up with 3 frames per second! (think about how far we have gone.)
  3. A fresh battery would “only” last 400 to 500 photos.

What about the processing of all of these photos? Not really a problem:

  1. Download the photos from the card to the computer. This is the largest increase in time, like almost everybody else I'm still with USB 2.0.
  2. Import the photos into Lightroom. The computer is so much faster, it takes 10% to 20% longer for double the amount of photos.
  3. I quickly go through the photos, flagging what I want to delete…

It's a new phenomena for me, so why do I do that now? Why do I leave my finger on the shutter longer that I use to? Because of the “lucky” shot.

Am I an incompetent? I don't think so, my customers don't think so… The “lucky” shot has brought me a lot of money. I'd say that at least 10% of my large prints in the last year have been the “lucky” shot. I work hard to set the “lucky” shot, but better prepared, the more lucky.

So back to my 865 photos, it would have cost me $550 to shoot these photos with Kodachrome!