Canon just announced a new camera, the 1DX Mark II, that gets an astonishing 16 frames per second. This is a tremendous tool for photographers who shoot action -- specifically sports, wildlife and birds. I used to use a medium format camera, the Mamiya 67, and it had a power drive that automatically advanced the film and took a picture every second. I could cock the shutter manually faster than that, so I never used it. My 35mm Canon at the time took pictures at 3.5 frames per second, which seemed like a rocket ship by comparison. That's sort of laughable by today's standards, of course. My Canon 5D Mark III shoots at 6 fps, and while that's great and I can capture action quite well, the truth is to capture every nuance of a high speed event, a faster frame rate is required.
I'm traveling to my snowy owl workshop in Barrie, Ontario, Canada right now, and I bought the 7D Mark II with its 10 fps rate just for birds. The difference between 6 and 10 frames per second doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is. Birds in flight change the position of their wings and bodies every millisecond, and it takes a super fast frame rate to reveal all the nuances of their motion. At 16 fps, absolutely nothing would be missed. When you buy a new camera, seriously consider the frame rate and, depending on what you love to shoot, you may agree with me that it's worth the investment to get the fastest rate you can afford.
I photographed the tiger cubs at play with the Mamiya RZ 67 with manual focus, manual exposure, and frame rate dependent on how fast I could manually cock the shutter and fire.
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