Frames per shoot, shoots per month, seconds per decision. That is the whole formula. See your hours per year and what they cost you.
Benchmarks from published industry norms and a UK survey of 300 plus wedding photographers. Sources linked below the calculator.
The shortlist bar assumes software hands you roughly the keeper set first, so you judge about 40 percent of the take instead of all of it, at the same seconds per decision. From a 2,000 photo wedding that is around 800 picks.
Decision time only. Import, preview rendering, breaks and second-guessing are extra, and they are not small.
Culling time reduces to frames times seconds per decision. At three seconds a frame, 1,000 frames is about 50 minutes of decisions, and a 3,000 frame wedding is roughly two and a half hours before a single edit. A UK survey of more than 300 wedding photographers found culling takes about 11 percent of working time, against 55 percent for editing. The full working is in how long culling actually takes and culling time benchmarks.
Frames times seconds per decision. At a realistic three seconds a frame, a 3,000 frame wedding is about two and a half hours of pure decision time, before import, previews or breaks. The benchmarks post has a target to beat.
A useful starting target is about 50 minutes per 1,000 frames, roughly three seconds a frame. Tethered and repetitive work runs faster; burst-heavy genres run slower.
Industry norms put a full eight to ten hour day at 2,000 to 4,000 RAW frames, with 400 to 800 delivered. See the shot to delivered ratio.
Kepla checks focus, open eyes and duplicates, then hands you a shortlist to approve instead of a full take to judge. It picks, it never deletes. How the sorting works.
Kepla clears the obvious misses in minutes: focus, open eyes, duplicates. Request Founding Access while it is free during development.