Tuesday, June 16, 2009

High Speed Continuous Shooting Mode

As I wrote in my introduction, I love photographing sporting events. I am currently following my two boys' soccer teams, the Canyon Country Crew and the Canyon Country Crossfire. I take photos at each tournaments and upload them to a gallery for all to view.
At the soccer field, I get a lot of comments about my camera and lenses such as: "this camera must take great shots!" or "wow! you must get really good shots with that lens!". And while the camera and the lens do make a difference, the operator/photographer is probably the most important accessory to have! Last year during one of Nicholas' soccer game, an older gentleman came to me, asking me what camera I had and what lens I was using. "I use a Canon 40D with a 70-200mm F/2.8 IS lens", I answered. He looked at me kind of funny and said: "Do you like your camera? Because I have the exact same camera and it takes terrible pictures!" I tried to explain to him how I shoot soccer, but when I mentioned ISO, he looked at me funny and asked: "What's that?". And that's when I realized that this man had no knowledge of photography. I politely told him that it is not the camera that takes bad shots, it's him that does not know how to use it properly!
But seriously, a lot of people ask me if they have to spend a lot of money to get good action shots. And I always tell them that if they don't know anything about photography, they are better off investing in a professional photographer. However, if they know a little bit about photography or if they are willing to learn, there are a lot of good entry level DSLR's that will do a pretty good job for action shots.
One of the feature that I probably use the most on my camera is the High Speed Continuous Shooting Mode. In this mode, I can press and hold the shutter down and the camera will take up to 6.5 shots per seconds. This allows me to get a series of photos of the same subjects. When I review my photographs, it looks like this series of photos taken during one of the Canyon Country Crew's games at Patriots Cup on June 6th, 2009.












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