Phil, one of the more experienced togs at the paper has a new Z9 and typical of Phil, he has embraced it with an open mind and realistic, but positive attitude. Coming from older model SLR’s it must feel revelatory. Personally I went through this process over a decade ago, when perseverance and possibly a little too much optimism was required, so two roads, same destination.

Trying out 60fps with the one second delay-post triggering option (Pro-capture on the Oly), he is basically shooting movies at 20mp. I must admit it was cool looking at effectively 6k movie footage, in what felt like frame by frame movie editing.

The EM1’s, especially the “X’s” have the same features, but a few generations ahead with more options in Pro-capture and the G9’s shoot 6k continuous, but do not play as well with my Oly long lenses. I must admit I was never tempted by either feature on either cameras system.

A bit like shooting street using my phone to control a seemingly unattended camera (thus disguising my intent), hammering the sports scene in 1/60th of a second increments, taken in the immediate past seems a bit (as Phil put it), like cheating.

Is it, or am I over-blowing it? Is there coming a time when 6k+ video, with all its ease and benefits will effectively replace stills photography?

Below is a set I took yesterday in single shot mode, relying on the other benefits of high end mirrorless, which are silent and smooth, near instant capture with no visual interruption. Switching cameras for different lenses, I lost a second or two so the first was the quick focus-establishing grab, the next three see the situation roll out over about two seconds, but another 100+ frames wedged in between? No thanks.

Add to that a bucket load of analysis paralysis from an afternoon lost to editing, and the whole thing seems like more work, less pleasure.

The reality is, you still have to get the first shot or be ready for it to use post-capture and sorting through even minutes of footage at 3600 files per minute, will take a super app before you even get down to the potential winners. Like a lot of things, more is just sometimes more, not a guarantee of better.

Post-capture action shooting lets you follow a player or a static subject and choose when to fire, post-capturing the moment just gone, but if you are chasing the ball, so constantly reframing, the counter intuitive disconnect of shooting what you just saw happen, while continuing to chase and fire trying to get what is currently happening is a skill in and of itself. Basically you are shooting what has gone, while seeking what is happening.

All of the shots below were single captures, none taken before or after. Could they have been better? Probably, but would I have appreciated the need to micro manage ten times as many frames to get one shot that is maybe a little better timed?

Nope.

More importantly, would I enjoy the process, get a feeling of accomplishment?

Hard no.

I suppose it comes down to this;

Do I have to get a specific shot (person/instance/situation/action) and do I need these features to achieve that?

Do I need to get the very best split-hair of a second version of the shot or will any well timed frame be enough? Surprisingly each frame is still different even at 60 frames, but only incrementally.

Do I have the time and the computer power to run through hundreds of images for just a few, something that I find the biggest stress of the process? I enjoy the capture, but find the captioning a pain, especially when you have a day when the best shots and the positively identified players do not line up.

Am I willing to blunt my instincts in favour of leaning on the tech?

Time and place may force a sensible compromise of the above, but otherwise mostly no.

Phil surprised himself shooting over 2800 images over two matches (or more to the point 40-60 odd sequences) which is probably ten times his usual, I shot 176 for one match which for me was frugal. He was realistic and philosophical about it, just enjoying the exploration with a laugh, but this is the only time I shot less than the more experienced tog to get the job done.

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While we were discussing this, the topic of the “AFL crop” came up with one of the journalists. The AFL crop (my term), is the tight crop we often see in national paper articles. Phil likes to shoot tight, loving the exploration of a tight group with a fixed long lens (all he uses), Paul and I tend to shoot wider, then crop as needed, although we both shoot tight if the action forces it. Paul shoots with a 200-400 (300-600 on an APS-C) and I use the 300 (600) and 40-150 (80-300) in tandem.

Above are three images at three different crops.

The first is as shot, the second is how I submit, allowing enough room for some creative license, maybe a peripheral player to be picked up and some context or just cropped out, the last is the “AFL crop” which is often the printed version.

I sometimes wonder also if the desire to shoot tight comes from the AF point selections available. A central cluster is pretty generic, but no great loss when shooting a busy central grouping. I use three single small boxes stacked upright, slightly higher than centre (which re-aligns to the same in vertical mode), giving me a more precise “people” shaped target point.

I find this is better for open fields as long as I don’t miss and with practice, I can pick out one person from a group. It also helps me avoid grabbing foreground grass.

I also limit the number of rows this can be switched to down to five, meaning if I want off centre, it is just one nudge of the control nubbin and two nudges is hard left or right edge. It is amazing how often the action is off centre.

So, how far can you get “A” grade crops from a sharp 20mp sensor and lens combination.

Even very tight crops like these below can go full page.

20mp in M43 is more than enough showing no visual difference for print or web use.