Burst speed is often quoted as a feature of sports and action orientated cameras.

This makes sense as there is litte excuse for these days for going home without the shot, especially in the digital era, especially with cameras that can often shoot 10+ images per second.

Personally, I feel the modern cameras available today can actually offer a very different benefit.

The three images below were not taken in burst mode. They were all taken as discreet single files, one after the other, but with a single shutter button push for each.

Why?

Because I feel that hitting the subject with a high speed frame rate shutter is (as I tried to say previously), a little like the scary and out of control feeling of a roller coaster dropping. It is exhilarating, but lacks control, connection and saturates rather than selects.

This is not necessarily a style that is available to everyone, but with instant firing cameras, with little or no blackout, continuous focus tracking, stabilising and smooth-gentle fire (silent even), you can enter sniper, rather than machine-gun mode.

Each shot keeps connection and each can be claimed as a selected take, not down to manufactured luck. By manufactured luck, I mean all the usual care and experience were applied to get into a space where a good shot could be taken, but the actual winning frame is one taken from a bunch of “blind” frames.

If I take 200 images, I hope that they represent 200 potentially useful images, not the best one from each batch of 5-10 images. They are not of course, because I am not that good, but they are all intended to be. The ultimate goal is to shoot a game of football, with less than 100 images, 15-30 being “A” grade, the rest nearly good enough or used for number comformation. Minimum waste and ware, minimum processing time, maximum productivity and efficiency, maximum job satisfaction.