When shooting any kind of action, whether it be sports, birds in flight, kids at play, or whatever, switch to the motor drive function in your camera, i.e. high speed continuous. One of the important specs you need to consider when purchasing a new camera -- if you like shooting action -- is the frame rate. This picture was taken with a Canon 5D Mark III which has 6 frames per second. That's good, but it's not great. It was good enough to capture the humorous antics of kids in Bali, Indonesia as they jumped off a waterfall for my photo tour group. But when you are shooting seriously fast moving subjects, like birds in flight, 6 fps aren't enough. You really need more such as 10 to 12 fps. This allows you to capture every nuance of the motion. It's impossible to study an action-packed composition as it happens because every millisecond it changes. You can only study these images with composition and artistry in mind after-the-fact. That's why the more frames you have, the better. My settings for this picture were 1/800th, f/11, 1250 ISO, and I used a 24-105mm lens. Note that even though I shot this in diffused daylight, I raised the ISO quite high to obtain the fast shutter speed.
2 Comments
Aug 26, 2015, 1:05:36 PM
Jim Zuckerman - Hi Daniel, A lot of pros are switching to the very light, less expensive, mirrorless cameras. The problem for fast moving subjects with the Sony and others is that the viewfinder is digital, and therefore it can't re-write the images fast enough to follow subjects like flying birds. I'm sure over in the next couple of years that will be improved a lot. I am planning on getting one of these cameras, maybe the Fuji XT2, simply because it's so small and light.
Aug 26, 2015, 11:59:08 AM
Daniel Reynaud - I'm not sure how real pros. like yourself view the Sony alpha 77 II, but I sure love mine for the way it comes loaded with really neat features including a continuous 12 fps !! Extremely useful for fireworks too ! I also love the built-in HDR.