Metadata revelations

Three Observers. Barcelona, 2014 (Note the three birds as well!)

I like lists and organization…so, one of the things I do rather anally is keep an annual list of my “keepers”. Usually, it totals around 600 images over twelve months, of which maybe ten or twenty qualify as “pretty good” (IMHO). The interesting thing, though, is what I learn from looking at the patterns that emerge, as these lists include all the metadata (and some other variables I track) from each photograph.

Here are some conclusions from my 2013 list:

–I shoot about 90% in black and white and about 10% in color, (Actually, I shoot 100% in color as this statistic just reflects the post-processing conversion rate.)

–I often forget to change my ISO from the previous shoot. That is, I’ll find myself in broad daylight, on a tripod, shooting a landscape at a ridiculous ISO, like 3200–my setting from the cathedral interior I was shooting the previous day. Dang, follow the checklist, man!

–I almost never use flash. Note to self: learn to use both on-camera and strobe flash better, especially fill flash.

–A good 60%-70% of my images are shot from a tripod, regardless of shutter speed. On the tripod, I always use mirror lock-up along with a delay to allow the camera to become still after pressing the shutter (I use the remote only for bulb-type exposures).

–I am getting much better at including the ISO in the same cross check as aperture and shutter speed. I used to just keep my old camera on the base ISO almost all the time as it was too noisy if I moved much above that. However, with these new generation cameras (examples: the Nikon D800, Sony A7r, Canon 5DMKIII), I freely move between 100 and 3200 ISO as the situation dictates–ISO 100, generally, when I am outside in decent light, or anytime on a tripod…ISOs 200 to 800 when I am handholding and walking the mountain trails or the city sidewalks…ISOs 1600 and 3200 for indoors, handheld shots, or for the night stars. I could probably even push it to 6400 and be OK in some situations. I do this manually, preferring not to set up the auto ISO function in the camera. Being free to move up and down the scale is all quite liberating. I just need to remember to reset the dang ISO when I change situations (see first bullet)!

–Generally, I am pretty good at picking the right aperture for the depth-of-field required–and I use aperture priority almost exclusively (on a rare occasion, I go full manual). This is important because of the balance I need to find between getting sufficient depth-of-field and avoiding the effects of diffraction. With the 14-24, this is not really an issue as f/8 will often get most everything in focus and avoid the heaviest diffraction effects. But, this is often a player with the 24-70 when the diffraction-inducing f-stop of f/22 might be required. (All this depends, of course, on whether or not a super sharp image is actually a requirement–many times it isn’t.) Note to self: practice focus stacking…shoot three images (at, say, f/5.6), focused at the fore, middle and backgrounds, then combine them in Photoshop.

–My two most often used lenses are the 24-70 f/2.8 and the 70-200 f/4. They get about 40% each of the total, while the 14-24 f/2.8 picks up the remaining 20%, or even less.

–It’s interesting to see how often I am at either the shortest or longest end of the focal length of a given zoom–this happens maybe 25% of the time.

–The good images often come in bursts. Looking at the numbering, I see that I might have three, four, or even a half-dozen “keepers” within a 30-frame range…then I’ll go 150 or more frames without a decent photograph. Maybe this indicates that sometimes I am “in the zone”, and sometimes I am not–or I’m experimenting and things aren’t working.

Finally…

–I need to get a lot more critical at culling out the good images from the great images. In 2014, lets see if I can cut the “keepers” list in half!

So, maybe take a look at your metadata trends and see if they might be telling you something important.