Quote Originally Posted by Bill W


mattsartin;


My 40D is seldom off the AI Servo and High speed settings....most of my time photographing is spent trying to capture birds in take off/landing situations as well as in flight.


If the situation arises for a 1 frame, static shot of a bird.....my practice of rolling my shutter finger usually allows me that 1 frame shot. I've not yet perfected this technique....but is a quick 2 or 3 shot burst of a static subject a bad thing?


I seldom maximize the 6.5 fps capability of the 40D; I watch the birds for movement indicators and try to anticipate that moment.


Rarely do I find myself selecting the first frame of the shooting sequence.


When I can afford to move up to a FF body, it will be the 1D Mark lll (or 1D Mark ll N), because it's 10 fps ability separates it from the rest of the FFs.


Oh yeah, I do end up w/quite a few (many hundreds) shots during these sessions....so make sure you have plenty of memory available.
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For reference, the 1D series is not full frame. It's less crop than the two-, three-, and four-digit models, but it's not full frame. The 1Ds series is full frame, but it's not 10fps.


I'm slowly learning to admit that I have a thick skull. When I first got the 10fps monster, I used to rip away and toss 90% or more in the bucket when I came home. Lately, I'm getting better at shooting the right shot the first time (and shooting it right - desired composition, desired lighting, etc.) so that my post-processing time is shorter and my disk consumption is lower. I filled a 1TB drive with my/our work from 2002 through 3/2009; we've killed another 1/4TB in two months (with six events, admittedly). All too often, I'd fire away in HSD and not know what actually made "the roll" until I got home and reviewed. I don't like going home unaware of what I really got. In addition, firing away like that led to bad habits - the first and last shots were often blurry, because I wasn't using good technique on a consistent basis.


My opinion (and it's nothing more than that, except that I suspect a lot of folks with tens of thousands of frames shot would agree) is that it's all about timing, anticipation, and truly knowing your equipment. A "better" camera is going to shorten the shutter lag, so you'll have to learn that difference, but it's not going to change much else.


Do try shooting with flash sometime. When you have to wait 2-5 seconds for the flash to recharge, you'll see a lot of stuff disappear in front of you, and you'll gain an ability to read the action. Shooting at 6.5fps means you'll be taking a shot every ~154ms. Shooting baseball outdoors in the daytime probably leads to shutter speeds of 1/1000th or better. At 6.5fps you're still only capturing 0.6% of the action!