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Shooting Fast - The Rule of Numbers
By Jeff Cable
www.jeffcable.com
When it comes to digital cameras, the most common complaint that I have heard from people is that their camera is not fast
enough. When people talk about the speed of the camera, most of the time they are talking about the time delay between
pressing the shutter release and the capturing of the image. Those of us who have been shooting digital for more than a
couple of years know that this was a big problem with earlier digital cameras. The good news is that times have changed
and most of the newer digital cameras (both point-and-shoot and DSLR) have fixed this "shutter lag" problem and made
the shooting experience much more like the old days of shooting film.
Now that most of the new cameras offer almost instantaneous capture, the newer DSLR cameras can use this speed to capture
many images per second. This is incredibly handy when shooting fast moving subjects. I use this "burst mode" whenever I am
shooting sporting events, animals and sometimes when shooting family portraits.
In February I had the pleasure of spending a week on the island of Maui in Hawaii. This is the height of the whale watching
season and provided a fabulous opportunity to capture the amazing humpback whales in their own environment. I took a couple
of boat trips off the coast of the island to see these creatures up close.
Most of the people on the boat were trying to capture the whales with point-and-shoot cameras which posed two problems. First,
they have limited zoom which was required to get nice tight shots of the whales. Secondly, they could only shoot one image
at a time which meant that they had to be very lucky to get the "killer shot" of a whale in action.
I was armed with my Canon 20D which lets me shoot approximately 5 images per second. Whenever I saw a great opportunity, I
would fire off 10 or 20 shots to capture the entire sequence of a whale's movement.
As you can see from the images above, this allowed me the opportunity to capture many different views of the whale in action
and then I could pick the best images when viewing them on my computer. When people see my images from this trip, they are
amazed at the pictures of the whales. What they don't see is the other 800 images that I shot in those 3 hours in order
to get the "money shots".
This image was taken from a sequence of 15 successive shots. I picked this one because I like the full extension of the
fin. I would have had to be very lucky to shoot just one image and grab this exact moment.
As I mentioned, I sometimes even use the burst mode of shooting when capturing family portraits. Every second that passes by
offers a slightly different expression on the face of the subjects and I find it helpful to grab multiple images of each
setup, which lets me pick the image with the best overall feeling or emotion.
Shooting sports is probably the most challenging experience for the amateur photographer. The action is fast and the players
are not likely to stop and strike a pose for you. Whenever I shoot a sporting event, I make sure that I am shooting in burst
mode. With so many subjects on the field, court or rink, I rely on the high speed shooting to help isolate the best moment
in a particular play. And like the portrait shots, this lets me get the pictures showing the changes in the emotion as the
seconds tick by.
Now, a couple of words of caution: You should make sure to have a fairly large memory card if you are going to do a lot of
rapid fire shooting. I prefer to use Lexar Professional UDMA 300x 8GB and Professional 133x 8GB CF cards since they allow for ample images and the fast
data transfer rate to clear the buffer of my camera as fast as possible. Also, you should make sure that you do not overshoot.
Remember, when you get back to your computer, you have to search through all of the images to find the jewels amongst the rocks.
For me, the old days of shooting one or two digital pictures of a scene are gone. I really do prefer to shoot more images to
try and capture the subtle changes in life as it passes us by. I can see the slight movement of the clouds, the subtle change
in someone's smile, the more intense look of an athlete in action. This high speed shooting is a great way to see those "frames of life" that we may have even missed at the time we had the camera in front of us.
Shoot fast, shoot more and have fun!
Articles by Jeff Cable:
- Take a closer look - The fun of macro photography
- Don't stop shooting now - It's "The Golden Hour"!
- What is the difference between a $300 lens and a $2000 lens?
- Shooting Underwater Photography on a Budget.
- The Sport of Photography
- Hurry up…It's time to slow down
Visit www.jeffcable.com
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