Any reason for Burst Mode?

[Alan Gales]

I used to shoot a lot of Fast Pitch Softball. Trying to catch a ball coming off a hitter's bat isn't easy so shooting at 5 frames per second really helps whether shooting film or digital.

My daughter was a pitcher. While learning a new pitch her mechanics would sometimes be off. With a DSLR I could shoot her at 5 frames per second and then play it back on the camera and see exactly what she was doing wrong and when.

 

[fstop]

Birds in flight. You want to get a perfect image, you need to follow and use a burst mode. Still, you. need luck to get that image.

I've done fairly well shooting flying ducks with a F-3 thumbing the film advance manually, its not luck, its planning and practice.

 

[cooltouch]

All of my pro-caliber -- or even semi-pro-caliber cameras -- have motor drives. Nikon F2s, F3, F4, FE, FE2, Canon F-1s (new and old), A-1s, And when I use a motor drive, I don't set it on S. I set it on C. I shot motorsports for years. Frequently I had to capture shots of race cars zipping by me at 200+ miles per hour. For that sort of action, you develop panning skills, and you remind yourself (back then) that film is the cheapest component of a shoot, so you use as much as you need. And that's what I did. Now most of the time, I was shooting single shots, but if I felt the need -- like seeing an accident unfold, for example -- I'd hold the button down. Sometimes you have to hold the button down to capture shots like this:

Porsche-powered March 83g at an IMSA race, Riverside International Raceway. Canon F-1 (with MD MF), Tamron SP 60-300, Kodachrome 64. This is not a crop.