How many tapes to take on a liveaboard?

[ScubaBob92651]

Bob... sounds like you are of the Ansel Adams school of underwater video rather than the Babe Ruth school. The former carefully composes and waits for just the right moment to capture the video sequence, the latter shoots and shoots and just keeps the "home runs" while getting a lot of strike outs along the way!

Yeah, I wish I could get just one shot of Ansel quality

 

[sharksdelight]

When I first started filming, when my hair wasn't grey, I used to use a ton of tapes. I learned to be far more selective in my shooting since. Usually I will bring 6 or 7 tapes on a 12 day trip and use, maybe 3 at most. This helps a great deal in post production as there is less crap to sort through and log and capture. Of the 3, I usually keep maybe 15 or 20 minutes of footage. There are some exceptions, when in Lembah I came back with 15 tapes worth, most all of it with excellent and usable footage, or if I am on safari in Kenya, I will come back with quite a bit. Even in the Cocos, my favorite place to dive, I usually only shoot 3 or 4 tapes worth, and, again, only keep a small percentage. I believe in never falling in love with your own footage, it helps to be self critical when editing.
Steve:14:

 

[drbill]

SharksDelight... agree with your thoughts on not falling in love with your footage. I'm in the process of going through a third round of editing on all my footage (undreds of hours) of different taxonomic groups to weed out the less desirable footage and only archive the best.

Of course as a biologist, I'm not just looking for the most aesthetically pleasing footage, but that which shows diagnostic characteristics, behaviours, interactions, etc., so I keep a lot more footage of each group.

Even when I'm discerning, I still shoot a lot of tape if I am traveling into an area I've never dived or filmed before. It often isn't until weeks later when I'm post-processing that I really know what I have since I can't see everything clearly in my little 1/2" viewfinder. I've filmed (and retained) some interesting behavioral stuff that I missed in the process of keeping the subject properly framed, etc.

Of course it all depends on what your ultimate use of the footage is.

 

[sharksdelight]

Dr. Bill, a few months ago a footage house wanted to purchase my library,they sent me a couple of external drives and this made me go through a couple hundred tapes to sort out the best and place them in folders according to species. This meant log and capturing for weeks, hated it, log & capturing is the only thing I dislike about the editing process. Never the less, it was the best thing I have ever done in that it forced me to go back and really organize what I had. It sounds like you were way ahead of me on that score. Headed to Bali this July for the 1st time, have no idea how much I will shoot.
Steve:14:
ps. I still think you might have been the person I bought some videonics stuff from way back in the early 90's. I owned Del Mar Oceansports at the time with Al Jones and Mike Muldoon.