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Old August 25th 08, 03:26 AM posted to rec.photo.digital
Alan Browne
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Posts: 12,640
Default 10 fps versus 5 fps

Toby wrote:
"Alan Browne" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
...
Stefan Patric wrote:

If you're a good still photographer, 3 to 4 frames per second is all you
really need to get great action sequences. However, if all you really
want is "peak action," great photographers have been doing that for 60
years and without motor drives.

The least useful specs that get people to fork over cash:

* fps
* start up time
* high number of focus points


That totally depends on what you shoot. If you are a sports shooter high
burst rates are critical. You will not find a single pro at the Olympics
shooting with a camera that does under 8 fps. And most photojournalists I
know here in Asia shoot bracketed bursts of three shots for every frame.
Getting one good shot pays for the body, and more.
Of course if you don't do this kind of stuff you can live with a couple of
fps and never miss it.


And that's the point, isn't it? Most DSLR buyers are not sports
shooters who "need" high fps. And its value to sports shooters is not
as high as you may believe.

But as a worm on the hook for Johnny-bucks-in-pants, fps followed by
other marginal spec items gets the plastic out.

And guess what? A lot of great sports photography was made before motor
drives appeared... that took talent and specific knowledge of the sport.

A "better" sports camera was the Canon 1n RS (pellicule mirror) as its
shutter delay was on the order of 5ms ... 10x faster than D/SLR's at the
mere cost of a stop of light in the VF and onto the film. I'm
disappointed Canon have not rolled this out in a DSLR esp. as the clean
higher ISO images overwhelm the stop of light loss.

An article a few years ago about SI shooters at the super bowl producing
10's of thousands of photos that were considered crap by the photo
editor belies the notion of high fps shooting being the way to shoot
sports. Talent is better than high fps.


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