Just Out of Curiosity...

...What's the most you've ever shot in a day?

Do you even have any idea?

For me, with film, I believe it was six rolls of 35, or 210 shots; and that was a challenge. John Gossage used to assign his graduate students to shoot 10 rolls in a day, and I might have tried that once. I don't remember. (I shot 35 frames rather than 36 on a roll because 7x5 fit in a PrintFile negative page.)

I'm sure I've exceeded 210 shots with digital but I don't have a read on precise numbers. Not often, though. I'm a light shooter, even when I'm shooting heavy.

Just wondering, following the previous post and some of the comments.

Mike

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Featured Comments from:

Manuel: "That's a very curious question. The first time I used a digital camera was some eight years ago, when a friend lent me a Canon Ixus so that I'd shoot a guided pedestrian tour in my hometown. I think I shot a mammoth eight pictures that day! My friend just laughed at me: 'you could have taken a thousand pictures,' she told me after a lecture on memory cards and battery life, with the kind of tone teachers employ to their dumbest students. I knew about all that, but somehow I hadn't shaken off the old habits of film and had shot sparsely.

"When my first serious digital camera arrived I used to shoot a lot, but never exceeded a hundred pictures per day (of which I'd save half a dozen at most). Seeing how poor those pictures were, I decided to shoot less and think more about what I was doing, being more careful when choosing my subjects and taking due care with exposure and perspective.
Then I converted to film and dropped digital photography. Now a film roll can last me several weeks. (I only photograph on weekends.) I only shoot what I find to be worth photographing, and that is if I can get a good picture out of it.

"In a nutshell, I never shot a lot. I believe there's nothing to be learned out of filling a memory card in a day. People should be more selective about their subjects instead of shooting everything they see. In fact, if I were a photography teacher I'd oblige my students to use film cameras, so that they'd learn the intrinsic value of each picture.
Besides, what's the point of filling several external drives with meaningless pictures?"

Matt Greer: "I occasionally get to shoot sports, so the number gets high pretty quickly. I've photographed marathons for a company that wanted three photos of every runner you can get. At a marathon in Calgary, Alberta this year, I broke 18,000 pictures. While that was easily a record for me, they guy next to me was over 24,000, which is also amazing for a not-so-huge race. Fortunately, this company provides the cameras, so my shutter is still intact."

James: "986—digital. Same camera and 100mm macro lens—poison dart frogs, snakes and other reptiles. And a red-kneed tarantula."

Jack Nelson: "I was shooting a fiesta in Mexico once where people were in costumes and dancing in processions. A friend suggested I shoot JPEG so I could shoot bursts. I got home and had about 2,500 shots and it took me a couple of weeks to wade through that many shots. I ended up with about as many good shots as I would if I was shooting normally (maybe 250 shots would be normal for a fiesta like that). I'll never shoot that many again."

psu (partial comment): " Taking a lot of pictures is actually tiring. You have to train up to be able to do it, IMHO."

Dave Levingston: "Back in the bad old days when I was doing newspaper work it was routine for me to shoot 10 rolls of Tri-X a day. And that had to all be developed, edited, printed and captions written before I went home for the day. And people wonder why I don't miss the darkroom.

"Since digital came along I shoot a lot more. Without checking I'm sure I've done 5–6,000 frames in a day on many occasions. Those newspaper days taught me to shoot everything and sort it out later. That's ingrained in me and it's just how I work. Digital has made it a lot less painful and much more affordable."

scott kirkpatrick: "Maybe Kirk Tuck will weigh in here. In his blog he says with some satisfaction that he just shot 4,500 images in a four-day assignment. Not me. 50–100 images when with family for a few hours is more typical, maybe 200–300 for a day. If I go out on the prowl by myself, I can accumulate 100 an hour, but I can't keep it up all day."

Roger Bradbury (partial comment): "A screen full of almost identical photos to choose from fills me with despair, so I try to get it right in as few exposures as possible. I aim for 'do it once, do it right.'"

Bryce Lee: "In days gone by?

"Easy. A now-deceased friend and myself covered the last day of operation of the Bloor-Danforth streetcar line in Toronto before it was replaced with the current subway. We were using four Nikon F2's and F3's with motor drives.

"We started on the east end and worked our way west shooting all the time. I had a large backpack with 60 bricks(20 rolls x 36 exposures of Kodachrome). He had a similar backback for the exposed rolls. We had opened all the boxes and labelled the unexposed rolls with write on masking tape so we could keep track of who shot what. I used blue ink for mine, he used red ink.

"As noted started on one end with a day pass each, and covered the line end to end, twice.

"The next morning went to work stopping off at Kodak Canada on Eglinton Avenue West before going to work at the local school board offices a mile away. The slides were all ready by about four p.m.

"Something like 40 bricks were exposed, and yes there were a few duds. Thankful too for spare batteries for the drives. Still and all about 26,000 colour slides give or take. Then we had to label the slides!

"And from that one day...made gobs of money selling last day images to all and sundry...still have some remaining to this day. PCC street cars are gone, my friend is gone, Kodachrome and Kodak are gone as well. Am feeling my age...."

Ken: "On safari in Botswana, I shot between several hundred and somewhere north of 1200 (digital, RAW) frames of wildlife per day, depending on the action and the light. It is easy to get excited and shoot a lot of frames (especially at dusk and dawn) when photographing big cats or African painted dogs hunting, a huge herd of cape buffalo on the move, a family of elephants heading to the water, birds in flight, and so on."

Rod Thompson: "Years ago on a trip to Prague, I rationed myself to five rolls of film a day over three weeks and found it hard to use all of it. These days five 8 GB cards would do the same trip (RAW 16MP).

"I work in the industry (sales and printing) and am seeing a real increase in 'image clog' from a lot of customers. I wonder what the average life span of an image is in the digital world, six months? We still get in negatives from WWI regularly to copy and I often wonder if the original will still outlast the digital file!"

Chad Thompson: "Unfortunately these days the bread is buttered eight hours a day at 24 FPS."

Patrick Dodds: "All day coverage at a wedding might net me c. 2,000 pictures but I'm a heavy editor and am likely to share only about 250–300 of those, edited. I'm trying to shoot less as it makes me love the job more, but blinks, awkward body movements, rapidly changing expressions and numerous other factors mean that I am likely to always overshoot at weddings and other social occasions. I use flash sparingly in part so as to minimise the impact of so many photographs being taken.

"The hardest part of it all? Relaxing, letting go, letting my style come to the fore. Looking at fewer of other people's pictures is likely to help in this regard and will hopefully enable me to take fewer pictures of better quality—improvement is endless."

Patrick: "I'm a wedding photographer. Brides expect unreasonable numbers of images any more. While I carefully select and edit my images to about 500, I'll regularly shoot between 1,700 and 2,500 in a day. And, believe it or not, I don't machine gun it. Wedding days are long, and there's a lot happening to capture. I once delivered 900 images to a bride who later complained that all her friends got twice that number from their wedding photographers. There's no pleasing some people. Personally I thought 900 was excessive."

Comments

[Trevor Sowers]

Once at an all day figure skating competition that I was the official photographer for I shot 6000 (approx) in one day.

[Josh Hawkins]

From what I vaguely remember, it's been 7 or so years, about 6000 frames. Coverage of the full Chicago marathon followed by a magazine spread (kids with that years hot Christmas toys) with images for the cover. I slept well that night.

[James Symington]

On a trip to Angkor Wat and associated temples last year I did 700 in a day on a D800e - most of that off a heavy tripod too - starting at about 5 in the morning. I only had one full day there and it was a place I had been keen to see since being a teenager so I was ready to kill myself to get as much in as I could. I duly killed myself.

On film 10 - 12 rolls of Velvia 35mm would have been a very heavy day or 20 or so rolls of 6X6. Expensive business doing that though.

[Alex Buisse]

I just took a look, and one month ago had a location trail running photoshoot clocking in at 2613 on day 1, and 1935 on day 2. Very changing light conditions, different locales, and an onsite client who wanted to get the most for his money.

I am happy I wasn't the one editing it!

[Kalli]

That's easy for me to remember. Back when I shot concerts, I had my D40 and a couple of 2GB SD cards. Filling both cards would get me some 700 plus photos. At some point I borrowed a slow, slow card my then girlfriend (now wife) used for her point and shoot, filled both of my 2GB cards and then put some photos on her card. Over 700 photos, but less than 800 probably. All from a battle of the bands sort of things.

I've stopped shooting concerts now and I rarely have to change out one of my three fast 8GB cards because I've filled it up with my E-M5

[Greg]

I frequently shoot around a thousand a day when photographing people or on a trip in colorful areas (fall leaves for example). For a day of macro photography then maybe 20-30 pictures. Except for studio photos these are all with tripod.

The other question is how long to edit them down to just a few to post process. I normally get that done with in a day.

[James Weekes]

I am the same way. I still think in 35mm terms. I too shot 35 frames due to the print file pages. I am curious as to whether this is due to creative fatigue or just a limit imposed mentally years ago when I shot film.

When I shot weddings, ten or twelve rolls was my norm and I hardly noticed, but for myself it seems to be about 140 to 180 shots and I'm done.

[Lars Jansen]

Rough guess would be around 4 rolls of 135 film. Won't be higher then 5 or 6. I'm sure I have not topped that in digital. When shooting I've never been bothered with the cost of processing or film, until afterwards. If I remember correctly I usually expected 2 films a day on holidays, which have always been my most productive periodes.

[BH]

In the couple of weddings I've shot I took around 700-800 frames. Digital. I've heard from some full time wedding photographers that they shoot on average 4,000 frames per wedding. I can't imagine editing that.

[Dave]

A few months ago I did engagement photos for some friends. I shot over 1300 pics in four hours. Lots were doubles or triples of a similar pose. It's hard to get the perfect expression on two faces at once. I probably could have gotten away with taking only 150 shots but digital is free so why not experiment and try for perfection.

[Rick Donnelly]

At the height of my film photography interest (around 1987-88) I can remember shooting 10-12 rolls of 35-exposure 35mm in a single day. All of it was Kodachrome back then (mostly K25), and at least half of the transparencies were discarded in the first light table edit, which is a rather expensive approach but it worked for me.

The next resurgence in my shooting started in 1995, and I don't think I ever did more than 2 or 3 rolls in a (long) day. When I went to medium format around 1998, The cameras never saw more than one roll a week!

As I moved to digital, my exposure volume curiously became less and less. That might seem counter-intuitive with digital technology, or maybe I just saw less worth recording. My current camera is an Olympus E-M5, which I have owned for a year and only has about 500 frames under it's belt.

Oh well, perhaps it's just senility...

[Chris]

I used to shoot fashion photos for a friend who has a vintage clothing shop. Two or three models, a couple of hours. I'm certain I did over 1000 shots on one of those days. They would get culled down to the best 100 pictures for each model: front, back, both sides for each outfit, and there were about a dozen outfits each. Plus any extras if the model did a really good pose.

It was a fun experience, but I never got paid much. And there were hours and hours of culling and editing to do afterwards. It ended up being too much time for too little return.

[Rob]

Going back over 12 years of Lightroom files I shot 674 images on a perfect day in Denali Parkin Alaska. Not only was Mount McKinley 100% visible along with all the other magnificent scenery, but got relative closeups of grizzley, moose, caribou, wolf, lynx, and fox. Before digital I never shot more than 6 rolls other than weddings when 8 was the usual take.

[Kevin Purcell]

I think mine is around 400 shots photographing in, around and after a protest march in Seattle in about 3 hours or so.

[Edward Taylor]

I have shot as many as 175,000 images in a day for time lapse work (of course the timer did the actual shooting). I have shot 2,000 - 3,000 images at events on several occasions. Shooting 500 or 600 images in one sitting is not uncommon, especially if I count jpgs and raw. Generally though, I don't shoot too many, because it is so hard to edit a zillion shots. The most I ever shot on film at one time was 10 36 exposure rolls.

[psu]

I think the most I ever shot in one day was the one trip to Paris I had that overlapped on the final day of the Tour de France. Took on the order of 500 pictures in a few hours that day, in addition to the normal vacation load. Taking a lot of pictures is actually tiring. You have to train up to be able to do it, IMHO.

[Mark Hespenheide]

When I started shooting dance photography and didn't know what I was doing, I shot 1200-1500 images over the course of a four-hour rehearsal. After shooting a few performances, I got better about picking my attempted captures, but still ended up with 500-800 shots in an evening. Most of them would get tossed -- the low light and fast movement was difficult to shoot -- but the ones that worked could be amazing.

[Bruce]

Last month , I finished shooting a time lapse sequence of the stage being raised for the Rolling Stones' concert at Hanging Rock, Victoria, Australia. Had two cameras, different positions. Fifteen second intervals. Eight hours later, there were nearly 4,000 pix to post produce. Eliminated one camera's frames in favour of the one directly in front. Eliminated nearly two thirds of those to make the sequence not too long. Corrected perspective distortion in Lightroom, pressed button and it took an hour to render! Result is on Bruce Hedge Photography Facebook page. 'Tis now Sunday morning, the morning after the concert. That didn't happen. Mick Jagger got a throat infection. Cancelled the concert Friday morning..... Aah well, The Eagles play here in February 2015, and Bruce Springsteen played here in March '13, then Rod Stewart in March, so we're OK!!! So, Mike, my number is 4,205, (includes some "pictorial"), but I guess the time lapse sequence pix don't really count.

[Mark Levison]

At a 10yr's old competitive basketball tournament I've taken 900+ in two games of approx 40 minutes playing time each. After eliminating out of focus images, elbows etc in the way, eyes closed I was down to ~90.

[Blotzphoto]

I've easily shot 700+ at my neighborhood's 4th of July Parade.

[Andrea B.]

I shot almost 4 gig one summer day. This was raw FX-sized. It was a lot of frames!

[Bill Van Antwerp]

On a good day diving (5 dives x 1 hour each) I might shoot 200 to 250 exposures on maybe 10 subjects.
Bill

[James Sinks]

That depends on what I'm shooting.

A productive night in the swamp might be five hours and result in a couple hundred images.

A productive day in the studio might be a couple hours and produce 5000 shots in service of one or two pano/stacks (see the link in my info for a 1400 image shot).

A productive night on the tripod might be six hours and produce only a dozen images--which could be three test shots to nail a single composition and then nine exposures destined for the final HDR image.

[Dave Stewart]

6x6 - one roll, or 12 shots. And that was just to find out if my folks' mid-1950's Zeiss folder still worked. It did, and very well too (still does!);

35mm - two and half rolls, or under 100 shots;

Digital - near enough 1,400 shots taken on the 21st June 2014, at an arduous local charity biathlon, with circa 720 participants (plus organisers). Those shots were individual shutter releases - I generally avoid 'machine-gun mode'. I've been going along for a several years. As much to cheer on the hardy souls, as to take photos. It also gives me an excuse for not taking part (again) in the 20 mile cross country run, and 30 mile cycle!

I know some of the TOP readership would be most disapproving of me uploading 914 of those 1,400. Hey-ho, they're not intended to be artful, or make my fortune. Merely a gift to those taking part, and part of my donation to the charitable causes.

Currently, a normal day would be under ten digital shots, and one or two film shots, with the object of having two okay-ish shots for two Blipfoto journals. Your only allowed to upload a single photo to each journal, and I've dedicated one of them to just film.

[Benjamin Marks]

The most in recent years was at a friend's very lavish wedding last summer in France. I made 430 pictures on the first day with the civil ceremony, and 485 the next day of the religious ceremony and attendant festivities. But that was extraordinary. The end result was a 110 page book for the wedding couple with about a 150 images, about 15 of which were not from those two days. I was really pleased with the final product, and best of all, the book sits on the coffee table in my friend's apartment. It is a privilege to witness one's friend's important events; it is an honor, though, when they choose your pictures to show to the world and present it has how they want to remember the event. There was a pro working the wedding that day, after all. So color me happy.

Prior to that, there was a day when I made 230 pictures. At a certain point though, my brain gets "tired" of seeing -- and who needs just another snapshot? What is certainly true is that I used to think of film consumption, in the back of my mind, in terms of development runs. It was 8 rolls of 35mm film maximum in the Jobo; 9 rolls was a bit of a pain . . . you know, twice the development work for only 35 more frames. From my perspective, the biggest change(s) of the digital world (well, on reflection for me there are two: 1) a lack of any practical limit on the number of pictures I can take at a sitting and 2) quite by accident, I have learned to photograph in color and it has become my default. I say without irony: quelle suprise. Thank heavens there is something new under the sun.

I will say that due to 1) above and the Internet, I could produce a book for a reasonable cost for a friend. In the past, it would have been a box of 10 or so 11x14 B&W prints.

[MikeR]

597 images.
My wife and I toured for a month in Italy, in 2012. The really big day was in Venice, and comprised a long circuit by vaporetto. We boarded near the hospital on the North side, went all the way around past Arsenale, skipped the Grand Canal, and ended at the train station.

Most other days on this fantastic trip ranged from about 125 to about 300. Florence and Milan, as well as Rome, had high counts. Plenty at Riva del Garda, and Menagio. A fair number in an olive grove in Tuscany, where we stayed at an agriturismo.

I still haven't worked through the pile. Instead, I keep adding more. Example: one morning at Horicon Marsh in early August netted 183.

[Kevin Purcell]

I just checked my X100 for yesterday late afternoon ("photography in public") walk around on (very urban) Capitol Hill, Seattle.

Very nice light. Commuters starting to come home. More empty store fronts about to turn into something else -- it's becoming a project. Plenty of interesting things to photograph.

I took just under 100 photographs an hour during the transition from golden hour into blue hour with the lights turning on.

I hadn't walked this route (15th Ave E for the locals) in a while so it had accumulated a lot of "new" things to shoot. Lots of single shots. Some two shots (reframing portrait versus landscape or chimping to see framing is not quite right with the X100 OVF). So 100 shots per hour for me on the streets is not an unusual rate for a target rich environment. Perhaps just a little high.

Not done the edit yet but there are a few interesting shots that walk. Some may even turn out to be good..

For those who think you can't shoot at a high rate then you may need to be in a more dynamic environment with more fleeting target and to move along to find interesting things to shoot. Sometimes you get them; sometimes you don't,

The sun is out and I'll be out again (perhaps for two hours) and I expect to shoot at a similar rate.

[Willam Barnett-Lewis]

I like to set my E-PL1 on 6x6 monochrome mode and pretend that I'm shooting my Rolleicord III. 12 shots allowed. NO chimping either. Sometimes I'll let myself have a second roll along but usually the point of the exercise is to make me be as cautious with my shot choices as I was with that. I take far fewer shots but I come home with more keepers I think.

[Robert Hudyma]

Using film, one Kodak Propack of Portra film in an evening: 5 cassettes of 36 exposures for a total of 180 images.

Developing and printing (with 2 sets of prints) cost about $200 and the film was about $40. The budget for materials and processing set the maximum number of images that could be made.

Today, with digital equipment, I would make 30-40% more images covering the same event since I still think before I press the shutter release.

[kodiak xyza]

at a concert, for a band loves strobelights, and given the increased chances of rapid-fire shooting: 600+ photos in 90 mins.

typically, I take about 20 to 30 over the span of the concert to account of wincing, closed eyes, frowns, and flash from some other people in the audience.

[Edd Fuller]

When I first started shooting digital, I very often came home with 72 exposures--two rolls of 35mm film--give or take a frame or two. Not sure if it was coincidence or ingrained habit from my film days.

Nowadays, a "heavy" day for me is rarely more than around 125 exposures.

[V.I. Voltz]

When shooting commercial scientific work I've shot 112 rolls of film in a day, and subsequent to switching to digital I've shot several thousand frames because a lot of work I do of small subsjects is focus stacked, so each"frame" is 5-10 files.

Voltz

[Nigel Voak]

When I did dance photography I would assign 10-15 rolls for a performance, as film was cheap compared to not getting a good number of usable shots, where I got the timing , the dancer/dancers did not fluff the dance move and the result was a good composition.
At most I have shot two performances in a day so that makes about 800 frames. I used refillable cassettes loaded from 50m rolls to cut film costs.

With digital I think about 300-400 is the most I have done in a day.

Your question makes me realize how little I shot with film sometimes when I used 120 and 5x4 perhaps 2 rolls of 120 or 10 sheets of 5x4 even for paid work, but I still got the same of number of “keepers” as I get with the more spray and pray digital where the number runs into more than a hundred with little difficulty.

[John F. Opie]

Back in the day doing weddings, I'd regularly run up over 1000 exposures a day: 2 Hasselblad 500EL/M with 70mm backs. Doing gigapan panoramas, I've filled up two 32GB cards in a day, easy-peasy.

[Philip Storry]

The most I ever shot was ~900 shots in one day.

For those of a geeky inclincation, it was with an Olympus E-3. I had five 2Gb memory cards, and two sets of batteries (using the battery grip, so four batteries in all). I was impressed at how long the batteries lasted, especially as I was occasionally using Live View for some awkward shots.

The vast bulk of the photos were taken over five or six hours at Battersea Power Station, which is on the south bank of London's Thames.

For those unlucky enough to not know it, I should explain that it's an iconic industrial building for Londoners. After closure in the late 60's, it sat unused and various failed development schemes served it incredibly badly - leaving it roofless and slowly decaying. One of the more recent (but still ultimately unsuccessful) attempts at redeveloping the site hosted an open day as a way to get positive publicity, and to try to get public support for their plans.
The weather was glorious, the building was even more glorious, and I arrived early and took the opportunity to get as many shots as I could. A few thousand other people took a similar liberty, if I recall correctly - it was a very popular open day!

Towards the end of the day, with batteries low and a few tens of shots left on my last card, I then headed out to a local Flickr "All night shoot" meeting. (Someone I'd chatted with during the day had mentioned it, and I figured why not?)
That finally filled my last memory card, leaving me with no choice but to stop taking photos. But I think that the Flickr meet took less than 50 shots of my output that day - I'd have to go to my archives and check.

Now that I recall all of this, I think I had to sign something saying that the company doing the redevelopment had some rights to my photos. I never did get around to processing them, partly due to that.
But if I'm honest it was more down to the sheer volume than any worries about rights.
That development company went bankrupt, which means nobody is likely to pursue me over rights anymore (I hope!). So I should probably get out my patent pending Motivational Posterior Kicker (Mark II), and use it on myself.
It would be nice to finally get around to doing something with those 800+ photos I took of that magnificent building. At least one of them should be halfway decent, even by my low standards. ;-)

[Robin Pywell]

Recent enough that I could remember and check the folder to be sure:- In January of this year I went on a local photography club outing to photograph the splendid interior of one of our nearby Romanesque churches.
163 shots, but, that was only because unusually I'd set the camera to bracket exposures, so really it was only 55, one exterior shot and everything inside on the tripod exposed 3 times.
On a day and evening out in a particularly photogenic town (La Rochelle) last December I shot about 50 exposures

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Well, I know I've crossed 1500 shots in a day in the digital world (two roller derby bouts).

Film I'm less sure of, and my slides are separated from the B&W enough to make checking hard in the old records. I might quite possibly have hit 10 rolls, but might not. More than 5 for darned sure. I shot pretty heavily from the time I started bulk-loading film and processing B&W myself. I believe I can pinpoint at least one case of shooting 6 rolls in a day back when I was still in highschool (portrait project).

[Les von Pongracz]

Interesting question. When I was shooting film, the economics of processing and printing had me striving for the"perfect" one shot . You can guess how that worked out. It became a bad habit that led to compromise and a seriously stunted critical eye.
It's taken a while with digital to get over that. So now I find that even a casual outing may involve over a dozen exposures of a particular subject. And this has me realizing how much I really need to improve. Seems like a vicious circle. So it's not uncommon to go out for an hour and come back with 100 -120 shots.
In answer to the question, th
The most I remember taking are about 430 shots during a vintage race at LimeRock Park. (Having spent much time there, did end up with a good amount of keepers. )

[Rob]

On a single day with film I would say 5 or 6 rolls, though probably only 24's. With digital, over 400 photos for sure. But I've been trying to become more selective, even when my subject's are my rapidly moving children. Now I'll shoot a couple dozen at the most.

[Ken Bennett]

I can easily shoot 3000 frames covering a commencement ceremony, and I know I've shot more than that with a full day and evening of events (homecoming, that sort of thing.)

[SteveB]

When I first started taking pictures a roll of film could last me a whole season.

This evening I could see some fireworks from my house and I shot 180 pictures in 10 minutes (One of them was OK).

Its just a different proposition.

[Bill Wheeler]

Everyone is different. Like you, Mike, I am a light shooter. Also, I identify with Manuel's experience in shooting film. Picture-taking requires concentration, and sustained concentration wears me out fairly quickly. Same goes for working in the darkroom. I used to spend hours in the darkroom. Now, I am good for an hour or so, and that's good enough.

[Marshall]

On a non-sports day, I think 2700. An all-day event followed by a concert where I had all access for the whole thing and not just three songs. (Concert shooting is a little like sports shooting.) The event shots were awful. The concert shots were better. I could try to read into that...

[D. Hufford.]

I don't recall exactly, but when I used to do waterfowl photography, I recall easily shootingr 200-300 when shooting them in flight.

I recall the very first assignment I had in a photography class in university was to take 36 photos of a single tree. Well, ok, no problem I thought. I knew enough about good light and the basics, so it would be easy. After about half the roll, I was running out of worthwhile ideas.

[A.g.]

The first few weeks I got my Leica M4-P (I attached the collapsible elmar clone, the Industar-22 on it- a very nice and light set-up), I stumbled upon a music festival in Chicago. I had 2 Color films and 6 Tri-X, both 36 shots.

I met and photograph the strangest characters, met another street photographer, got in close with musicians, and got stuck in the middle of a bunch of teens partying.

Finished all the rolls and got a lot of keepers.

Probably my best photographic outing to date and the most I enjoyed shooting anything ever.

[Albert Erickson]

Mike, interesting question. When I first started with digital coming from film, I shot a lot thinking the cost was free. Not considering my time sorting and fixing the images. Now 12 years later, I am a much better photographer but shoot much less, maybe 50 a day. Likewise I have much less post processing to do with the images and a lot more keepers. Interested to see what other folks say about your question.

[Speed]

500 to 1,000 in a day when shooting an event.

In the early digital days I sometimes deleted images from my tiny memory card so I could continue shooting. Now I can go for days without filling one.

How much disk space do readers have filled with images? Video?

[Roger Bradbury]

Looking at frame numbers and Exif data, the most I've ever shot is a bit over 670 exposures in 11½ hours, in 2010. It was a big event and I was their photographer. I gave them 364 pictures in the end.

Not every shot was a world beater by any means, but looking briefly back at them, I'm still pleased. A screen full of almost identical photos to choose from fills me with despair, so I try to get it right in as few exposures as possible. I aim for, "do it once, do it right"

The event was the 30th annual Milton Keynes Peace Pagoda ceremony and I had 20 minutes' break all day. The 35th is next year. I fully expect to be talked into it again.

[Ed Kirkpatrick]

My years as a large format photographer and 24 exposures taught me to be extremely selective. More so, when I carried all of six pinhole trash-can cameras I was even more selective. Today, with digital, I feel extravagant if I manage a few dozen shots... I almost always get a keeper though.

[Stephen S. Mack]

Well, I feel a whole lot better about my shooting: about a roll every two weeks and about the same rate with digital. Reading these posts and others similar to them (about work habits) is a very helpful corrective, where I tend to feel that I am the only one who has weird
work habits. I don't. No more than everyone else whose comments I've read. Once again, Thank you, Mike!

With best regards, Stephen

[Dave Fultz]

Film? 2 rolls of Tri-X shooting Richard III.

Digital? 200 or so shooting a temperature inversion over lake Michigan.

Average? A five-hour "take-photos" visit to someplace: 100.

In all places, 10 worth post-processing out of a hundred is a very good day.

Dave

[hugh crawford]

I remember one job just after I got out of school where I was photographing a party for Rolling Stone magazine. Rolling Stone had just moved to NYC and they rented the Museum of Modern Art for a party. I ended up standing next to the entrance photographing every person who walked through the door. I think I used about two bricks of 135 so I guess that would be about 1400 shots. Handed the film to someone and never saw the pictures. Somewhere there are a lot of pictures of rock musicians mugging with President Ford.

In the late 70s we would massively overshoot because the magazines didn't have house accounts at the labs and you could mark up the film and processing. The markup on materials was often more than the fee.

The digital stuff I'm doing now , I don't know Is this one picture or 200?
http://hughcrawford.com/large.php?id=118640
http://hughcrawford.com/large.php?id=132189

[Mim]

Lightroom tells me my max is 2,308 - mostly in Glacier National Park last month. That was part of a 4-week trip around the western US that yielded a total of 32,000+ shots in 28 days!

Ever since I switched to digital I've always tended to take numerous shots of a subject, but after a recommendation from Bill Neill during a private workshop in Yosemite earlier in the trip, I started bracketing as well, multiplying everything by a factor of 3!

I'm very glad I did as sometimes the brackets are better exposed than the original, but it sure makes for a lot of images to sort through to find the keepers!

[Mark Sampson]

When I was a traveling senior-portrait photographer, c.1979-80, it was common to use up two 100-foot rolls of 70mm Vericolor II Type-S in a day. That was about 870 exposures... none of which I had to edit.

[Ray]

Two hours doing aerial work from a helicopter - 1440 shots (RAW) with an E-M1 and still had power to spare.

[Steve Bull]

My numbers really varied when I was photographing dog events; the most was a very large National Specialty over seven days that netted me in excess of 20,000 photos. It took me almost 6 weeks to edit & upload them. The big four-day agility trials often ended up with 5000 to 6000 prior to editing & that was after I got more selective. Culling large numbers of photos can be a very mind-numbing task, I can't really say I miss that aspect of it. Now a large number for me is about 200 after an afternoon of photographing shelter animals. More rewarding in the end in my opinion too.

[Ken]

On safari in Botswana, I shot between several hundred and somewhere north of 1200 (digital, raw) frames of wildlife per day, depending on the action and the light. It is easy to get excited and shoot a lot of frames (especially at dusk and dawn) when photographing big cats or African painted dogs hunting, a huge herd of cape buffalo on the move, a family of elephants heading to the water, birds in flight, and so on.

[John Gillooly]

I shot 1200+ images on 9 different days in October, with 2500+ on three of those days. Probably a typical month.

John

[Rick D]

Cheers Mike,

Kid soccer kicked me up to a previously unimaginable level--as many as 1700 shots for a 70-minute match (so double that for a two match/day tournament). Suspect if I had a better sense of the game I wouldn't be shooting as much but as it is, I do to try anticipate and catch key sequences and that rarest of gifts, the goal sequence. Two cameras--one with a zoom and one with a long, fast tele--and a lot of chaff to paw through.

In the film era perhaps a tenth of that total for a paying gig (less for personal shooting, as economics waded in). Nope, digital has hardly changed a thing.

[Gary Nylander]

I started working in the newspaper business 38 years ago, of course all film based back then, I used film cameras up to 2001 then we went digital. I think for some of the bigger new events or sporting events, to the best of my recollection I might have shot a dozen rolls of Kodak Extapress 36 exposure color negative film ( C-41 ), we had a Wing-Lynch film processor that could do 8 rolls at a time. I shoot way more in digital than I would have shot given the same kind of event in my film days, for example last week Skate Canada International figure skating event was in Kelowna, BC here, over the course of the day I shot something like 2200 images from just the men's free free program and pairs free program, I edited those two-thousand plus images down to 32 phtographs for an online gallery for the newspaper which can be seen here:

http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca/gallery/collection_ec032188-6232-11e4-8a73-001a4bcf6878.html?mode=nogs

I would have to say that the 2200 images is the most I have ever shot in one day, it took some time, about 3 1/2 hours editing and captioning all those photos.

Typically though, I would shoot 300 to 400 images during a hockey game, thats just for one period.

[Jerry Flannigan]

I just returned from a 10 day trip to Ireland a couple of weeks ago. I shot 2659 raw files with a DSLR and about another 500 DNG's with my Nokia Lumia 1520 camera phone. A lot of these were overlaps for panos. Some were multiple shots from different angles of the same subject.

[Ed G.]

I've gotten up to about 2000 in a day of bird-watching. I remember a particular day when I shot about 1000 in an hour, trying to get a shot of a diving Bufflehead duck at the moment his bill hit the water. A typical birding day is about three or four hundred.

Other than birds, I may have done a thousand one day at an Occupy Wall Street demo, and I've done a couple thousand in a weekend at a science-fiction convention.

Doing street photography, I doubt I've taken a hundred in a day.

[gnd]

Does doing timelapse count? I think on my most photogenic day this summer in the Italian Dolomites I filled two 32GB cards between sunrise and sunset doing timelapse which was close to 2000 photos.

[David A. Goldfarb]

On a long, productive day of bird photography, which is the most film/exposure consumptive form of photography that I do, I've shot maybe 8 rolls of 35mm/36 exp., which makes me a pretty conservative bird photographer. I don't do bursts and hope that one is right, as whenever I've tried it, the first frame is always the best. I like to edit in my head while I'm photographing and don't think that more shots make for better results, though with a fast and unpredictable subject, I'll shoot extras, just because I can't always know what exactly I've got until the edit.

My shooting habits for digital are pretty similar to film.

[almostinfamous]

earlier this year, I had a nightmare of a wedding assignment. The event was in a tiny town in the neighbouring state, and my usual 2nd shooter was unavailable and to add salt to the wound the new guy we did hire ended up a no-show(ended up hiring a local guy who we might as well have not) . Maybe it was the state of panic, but i ended up shooting close to 9000 images over 2 days.

[David Bennett]

At a demonstration, and I probably shot a couple of hundred frames. Next would be at an animal safari park - maybe similar numbers.

Often when I go out - one or two shots. I have never got into the idea that 'because it's digital' I can shoot frames without worrying about space or development costs. In fact, I sometimes have to nudge myself to take a 'maybe' shot.

[John Roberts]

I appreciate the freedom digital gives me to experiment like I never could afford to do with a film camera. Even though digital frees me to shoot buckets more than I ever could in my 35mm days, I have been able to avoid the temptation to become a "spray and pray" photographer. On a four day visit to Washington D.C., I made a total of 268 exposures. I think that was about the most I've ever done.

[Noons]

I still shoot 4-5 35mm rolls when I go out with b&w film. With digital, I used to shoot a lot. In the hundreds.
Since I started using RAW exclusively, that came down dramatically: it takes a LOT of time to do a RAW file to my satisfaction.
So, around 20 shots per outing.
(Yes, I know about automated software that does RAW by the ton. If I wanted to use that I'd not be shooting RAW in the first place, would I?)

[Hugh]

I started out with large format and twelve shots to last a week-end.

I'll happily shoot 1200 shots in a day.

... or even 500 in an hour.

Caution - not safe for work : http://hughalison.com/blog/an-hour-at-the-beach/

[Pierre Munson]

In season, I shoot motorsports. Why do I take a lot of shots? Experience has shown that several potential customers each year will contact me after the event to ask for photos of the blue car in the second qualifying session. 4-5,000 shots per day will help me respond to those requests. Better planning on the customer's part would be even more helpful.

[Cuisinedejere.wordpress.com]

My one day max was 886 photos on two cameras all raw. A full day of shooting a wedding. The next weddings after that I have gradually gotten to around 500 per day. Too much is not good for choosing, but one has to have the necessary moments captured + portraits and it all adds up.

[Ed Hawco]

In 1993 I had a gig to go to Scotland, England, and France, shooting for a travel guide. I shot about 750 rolls of Ektachrome in 60 days, which is about 450 shots a day on average (although in reality some days I shot almost nothing and other days I easily shot double that.

It was a work-for-hire gig, so I didn't have to edit any of it (although I did get a chance to go through the first cut). Unfortunately that also means I have no claim to any of the work, which is unfortunate given that the project collapsed and the work was never used, including a series where I literally stepped in front of bulls racing through the streets of a town in the south of France to get frenzied wide-angle POV shots.

I did manage to shoot some personal stuff in B&W on a second camera, but those bulls were all done in color for the project.

[Jim]

Years ago shooting for an NFL team both of us shot a minimum of 8 rolls a quarter - 32 rolls a game. That was the minimum. Three caamera bodies, 600mm f/4 - 80-200 f/2.8 and 24mm wide angle for when you had to get out of the way but pointed and shot as doing so.
Often we shot more but this was the minimum.
Then ran back to the lab where we dropped off color film or to our own lab where we souped the B&W. Then projection proofs - 9 frames on an 8x10 sheet - and get it all to the team publicist by 1PM Monday afternoon.

[susan]

I have been on 2 birdwatching shoots where I exceeded 3000 shots in one day-the Farne islands (UK), for puffins and Bonaventure Island (Quebec) for gannets.
I have come close to that at the Alligator Farm in Florida with egret hatchlings but that would be a 2 day total.

[Darlene]

June 2007, Galápagos Islands. My first dslr showed-up prior to the trip, the Nikon D200 and I thought I would give it a work-out while visiting the islands. I remember the first time I shot with it; I was full of delight when I realized I could switch ISO without having to change film or magazine. I shot 300+ shots the first day, and my slow decent from film began.

[Dogman]

With film, when I worked for a daily newspaper, I can recall shooting more than 30 rolls in a day on a couple or more occasions. Likely not really full rolls but there were several days involving lots of assignments and lots of overtime. With digital and now being retired, I have no idea but not a lot. I tend to shoot less and edit in the camera during the process so I'm not overwhelmed with Raw files when I get home. Most often, I shoot only two or three exposures of a subject and move on.

[m3photo]

Checking power lines: about 300,000 shots in four and a half months at an average of 932 per hour, some days about 7,500.

[Animesh Ray]

On film, the max I ever shot in a day was ~2.5 rolls of ~36 exp. On digital, ~200, and that's because I was using the burst mode to catch falcons hunting.

[Chris Grover]

I've always thought of myself as an under-shooter - when I went to cover Croatia and Bosnia I'd often run to just 3 or 4 films a day. Nowadays it's weddings and I shoot around 700 or 800 images to give the couple 300 images but it's sometimes a real challenge to convince them that the guy who's offering 1200 images isn't offering anything better!

[Robert Hudyma]

Dear Bryce Lee:

Thank-you for your great story, in the featured comments, about the final day of the Bloor-Danforth streetcars in Toronto.

I was a youngster when those streetcars were replaced by the subway. That was early in 1966. You must have been using the Nikon F and not the F2 or F3 since the Nikon F2 first came out in 1971 and the F3 was introduced in 1980.

I got my first Nikon camera in 1968 and it was a Nikon F Photomic-T, the body still works fine but I had to replace the metering finder with a prism finder.

[Steve Biro]

The most in digital for me was between 400 and 500 shots. That's without using burst mode. I'm pretty sure that was at an auto show. All hand-held .

[David Saxe]

There is a big difference between film and digital. I think when I was shooting B&W film, I occasionally would shoot about 7 or 8 rolls of 36 frames. My average for a day would be 3 rolls. With digital it is much higher and quite often I have shot between 750-1000 frames in a day. Knowing I do not have to develop the film helps and so does the editing. It is a lot faster editing in Lightroom than developing film, making contacts, and then small prints which is what I did then.

[Howard Sandler]

I have worked as a contract photographer for a company that provides photos to marathon participants. I have a position near the finish line and shoot jpg, framed and adjusted so they can put the photos straight on their sales site off the card. At about the 3.5 hour mark, the bulk of runners are finishing and I am shooting about 2 frames per second, each composed and focused individually from a monopod. Sometimes I need a break because my shutter finger cramps up. I shoot about 8000 frames that day, both a marathon and a half-marathon.

[Dave in NM]

"...What's the most you've ever shot in a day?"

I think it was the Pacific Ocean. And that was on film.

[Mike]

I shoot for a university, and every year commencement is the BIG event. I usually have a second shooter with me who takes care of the outside festivities of people hugging and taking selfies before the event while I slave away in the makeshift studio getting the muckity-mucks to yuck it up. It's like herding rhinos.

After that, we shoot the event itself, I take the floor with all of the pomp, circumstance, crazy hats and various speakers, singer, and what have you, he gets to go upstairs and get the overall shots and the details from afar with a long lens. We cover it very well.

He usually shoots about 1500-2000 images, and I usually crank through 2500-3000. Hey, it's a huge event with many moments. The light is weird, and photographing people speaking is always a challenge. Try it and you'll see some weird faces, and I can't make people look weird, so it's lots of shots to find a few keepers.

After that, it's pack up the lights from the "studio", haul it back to the car, sit in traffic, grab lunch, get back to the office by 2 pm, and download all 4500-5500 raw files. Put them all in one folder and sort by date created, but only because we synched the clock on all of our cameras before we shot a frame.

Sort, rename, pick the keepers, bring all into bridge, correct color, contrast, dodge, burn, but keep it simple. By 8 pm the 3-400 or so selects are up on the web and being shared with all of the students and families. Bingo, done!
http://montclairstateuniversity.smugmug.com/2014-jan-jun/052314-Commencement/

[David Boyce]

I am put in the mind of the, probably apocryphal, story of the photojournalist returning to his news paper after covering an event in the old days with a roll of 35mm and saying to the lab person "print all three".

Have never been a huge shooter myself, probably because I have always been a user of large format. It forces you to think before shooting. I did a trip around Scotland for two weeks recently and only shot about 100 images at most.

Most in a day would be when I was doing head shot work, would do about 20-30 per subject, usually would use one of the first 10, often numbers 2, 3, or 4, but discovered quickly that clients didn't think they were getting "value" with 10 shots. Most people I shot in one day for a corporate was about 70 to 80 people, so probably around 2,000 to 2,300 I expect. Never again.

[Jim Hamstra]

On an Africa trip one of the photographers in our group was bragging that he took over 2500 shots on one game drive. This was on a two month trip with many game drives and I always wondered how he ever had the time to edit them all. It seems that the trend is to take many shots but never print any.
I remember a two week trip to Cambodia in the 90's where I took a Linhof 4x5 and 36 sheets of film. Took the last two images the final day of the trip then spent several weeks in the darkroom printing about 20 of them.

[Michael Purcell]

As an eighteen year old shooting a for a local daily paper on a busy Friday, I shot two grip and grins, a prize-winning bull and a high school football game. Twelve holders, twenty-four sheets of 4x5 Super XX. Very long and hectic day.

[Arg]

The right question might be "what's the most KEEPERS you have shot in one day?". After deleting everything that [a] fails as photos [b] aren't the best of a multi-shot set, etc

[Ed]

2142 shots (a 10 Gpixel full VR panorama)...or should I say I asked my Arduino to shoot it and control the shooting. In the end it was one photograph of course. Last saturday I shot 245 pictures (avoiding people with umost care) to make an Agisoft 3D scan of a historic fortres (but also that resulted in one object (in this case an .obj file and soon a 3d printed work of art).

Micheal Purcell I applaud you!

Greets, Ed.

[Steve Smith]

No more than two rolls of film in a day. It doesn't matter if it's 36 exposure 35mm or 120 with 6x6, 6x7, 6x9 or 6x12 format.

I don't think I have ever used any more than six 5x4 sheets in a day.

[A. Costa]

About 140 shots a day for the two days-weekend I was in Rome last summer. But I think that is an holdover from my ten years of shooting on film -not for economical reasons, but because I learned to shoot in a meaningful way. No food instagrams for me, thanks ;)

[Gert-Jan]

Being a family photographer trying to take different and more interesting pictures than others, I'm a "low-volume" guy; I have never shot weddings, sports, concerts, wildlife, or whatever.

Having grown up with 35mm film and having to pay for the development from the pocket money my parents gave me, I never shot much and rather carefully selected the shots. That resulted in 1 or 2 36exp. films for a 3 week holiday.

That didn't change much in the early digital days. I went camping in the desert for two weeks with my PowerShot S10 and one spare battery, i.e. limited battery capacity, no way to charge, no way to offload pictures to other storage. So to make sure I could take pictures until the end I didn't chimp and didn't take too many.

Even today I don't take a lot, and my all time high is about 100 pictures in a day I think. In general, a family vacation is about 100 pictures/week on average.
The idea of having to wade through hundreds or thousands of pictures afterwards just puts me off, and I wouldn't have the time for it either; so I prefer to be selective when I take them rather than shooting first and asking myself questions after.

Walking around the whole day looking around, thinking about pictures to take, the right angle, light and so on feels good, but somehow makes me also feel an outsider, the camera isolating me from the environment. From a certain moment on I then prefer to put the camera down and simply experience whatever is happening, instead of being an observer shooting pictures.

I know I don't shoot enough to really learn and become a better photographer, I have to shoot more for that. But still, that should probably come from more regular shooting rather than occasional big bursts.

[Jeff]

It's more time than number of shots. 1-2 hours then my psyche seems satiated. 2-3 rolls of film or 100-250 digital. Bracketing, w&w/o filters, lens or other attachments don't seem to affect the number of actual different subjects. Even narrowing down subjects to one theme, one color, buildings scroll work, water, doesn't decrease the numbers.

[Adam Lanigan]

In my normal walkabout mode, I'd be hard pressed to cross 300 in a day. One commenter is right in that it is tiring. They eye needs to rest after a while. I can feel it and see it in my shots and that's when I know it's time to pack it in.

But I was also recently shooting for a local music festival and filled both of my 32GB cards (~1800 shots) in the course of an afternoon and evening that involved shooting two separate shows and a total of 7 bands. It can be a tough environment shooting in low(-ish) and ever-changing light from restricted perspectives in and around a boisterous crowd with sometimes energetic and quick-moving subjects. And all the while trying to capture that perfect expression of the evening. It's quite a challenge, but I found it fun and rewarding.

I did use the crutch of burst mode later in the night as my eye tired and the energy in the room amped up, but that's just another arrow in the quiver these days. If it helps to get that Goldilocks shot, then so be it. Some of my favourite shots from the week are here.

[paul in Az]

A serious question: why are the spray-and-pray photographers using still cameras? Seems easier to use a movie camera and pluck stop action images off that.
I've dumped all of my digital gear except for a P&S I seldom use and gone back to 120 film. The rate limiting question now is why I would want that particular shot.

[Dave Levingston]

Re: Arg

Whether I shoot 50 frames or 5,000 on a shoot, if I get one photo out of it that becomes a "keeper" that goes into my permanent body of work, then that's a successful shoot. That's what I'm after.

Getting to that one may take a while. On a big shoot I'll end up with 10 to 30 selects on the first edit. A second edit will get that down to fewer than 10. Then if one or more of those hang around and I still like them in a few months, that's success.

[Tim Auger]

When I first got my Brownie 127 in 1955, I shot eight pictures in one day – in fact in one hour. I got told off for extravagance and indiscriminate shooting. I don't think I've ever shaken off that trauma!

[Steve Smith]

There's no pleasing some people. Personally I thought 900 was excessive

We have about fifty in our wedding album. That's about right.

[Dony]

i once reached 500 in an event i covered in a day. but, that rarely happens anymore.

interestingly, according to this link, Garry Winogrand shot a lot in a day.

http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2012/08/20/10-things-garry-winogrand-can-teach-you-about-street-photography/