Spray and pray vs calculated

I rarely spray and pray. I usually will focus compose and sort of wait for the right moment. Even with a moving object. How many of you are taking many photos at once vs calculated shots. I sometimes will take 2 or 3 in a row. But have never held the button down till the buffer filled, I feel like it is just wasted actuations. I think this may be a holdover from fully manual cameras that were incapable of taking more than one shot.

When I'm shooting high-speed dance competitions with my daughter, I've gone to just pressing and holding. I'm sure it's a ton of unnecessary actuations, but I'm still trying to teach myself, "That's what you bought the cameras for." It's hard, I confess. I keep thinking wear and tear, and actually had to have a shutter button assembly replaced in a 60D I once had and I still blame that on pressing before it was ready (still using shutter focus back then) and "wearing it out" before its time.

I don't know. Now I'm babbling. I do know that I have captured 100s of dance pictures I simply wouldn't have been able to anticipate have I been shooting one-shot and trying to anticipate on routines I had never even seen. Action sports would fall similarly into the same category.

It still pains me to do it, but the pain seems to be worth the gain to me so far.

I agree that there is definitely a time and place to use high fps. I just feel as though you still would need to anticipate either way, or you'll just have 10 unusable shots instead of 2.

So much depends on what you are shooting and your gear. If your camera is 5fps or less you better rely on composing and getting the right shot as many sports with quick action spray and pray will leave you with a shot of the before and after, but not the peak action.

Frodge wrote in post #17711942
I rarely spray and pray. I usually will focus compose and sort of wait for the right moment. Even with a moving object. How many of you are taking many photos at once vs calculated shots. I sometimes will take 2 or 3 in a row. But have never held the button down till the buffer filled, I feel like it is just wasted actuations. I think this may be a holdover from fully manual cameras that were incapable of taking more than one shot.

I tend to use my 7D2's 10 fps when I shooting birds in flight. I want to get as many wing angles as possible and I'm not good enough to calculate when the ideal wing angles are available. So, I hold down the shutter button until I feel like I had a good chance to get a few keepers.

Now, when a bird is taking off or landing, I will shoot shorter bursts because the action is more predictable. I'm referring to the larger wading birds here....not a barn swallow or one of the very quick flying birds. With Great Blue Herons or Great White Egrets, you can see them slowing down to land.... and if I am in the right location, I can get some interesting shots....with less machine gunning.

I find that when using long telephotos, say 300mm plus, that shooting 3-5 frame bursts can give best results. Usually the first shot will have vertical movement from pressing the shutter button. Then you get a good shot or two, then as you start to think about releasing the button you again get some vertical movement. I mostly shoot aviation, and a lot of aircraft need shutter speeds of 1/160s or longer to get good prop/rotor blur. Some helicopters need as slow as 1/60s at focal lengths of 600mm. I will though still try to time bursts so that the middle shot is timed just right. Even for action sports I find trying to get a good mix of well timed short/fast bursts gives the optimum results. Thank god I am no longer pulling HP5 or Ektachrome 200 though my ME Super at 1.5 fps using the Autowinder M!

Alan

Frodge wrote in post #17711942
I rarely spray and pray. I usually will focus compose and sort of wait for the right moment. Even with a moving object. How many of you are taking many photos at once vs calculated shots. I sometimes will take 2 or 3 in a row. But have never held the button down till the buffer filled, I feel like it is just wasted actuations. I think this may be a holdover from fully manual cameras that were incapable of taking more than one shot.

I am in same camp as you...I grew up knowing every shot cost money...film, processing, print. Bigger format, even more money...one 4x5 like a roll of 35mm.
Spray and pray is 'free' now according to the predominant thought, but it does truly 'cost' in more rapid wearing out the shutter, so why be too cavalier with shutter button?! The response comes back, "But if it only costs $250 to replace my shutter, that is less than $0.003 per shutter actuation!" OK, so be it, but it means 3-5x as many photos to have to sift thru in the hopes of finding one good one.

On your hypothsis that technique reflects era of photographic learning...Just to experiment, a long time ago I shot team sports at the 3fps clip and there was only very small changes in body position detectable...a waste. I also shot at a pro baseball game, and you could get 3-4 frames of no-visible-baseball as it travelled from the pitcher to the catcher...a waste, again. It was far better, in both cases to shoot a well timed single frame! As gonzogolf stated, "as many sports with quick action spray and pray will leave you with a shot of the before and after, but not the peak action."

Rapid FPS is not necessarily even a solution to a problem, in all cases. Does it have a place, Yes! But OTOH I once watched a 20-something gal with her friends, in line for the Paris Catacombs...every 'shot' she ever took, whether of things or of her friends individually or in a group (and we were in line for 2-3 hours!) was a burst, and not even triplet for bracketing the exposure. Spray and pray in action.

Let's spice this up a bit.

OK. Here's a argument to the argument.

If you think that S&P is only going to get the moment just before and just after the action and you think you can do a better job of catching the exact moment manually, you are just fooling yourself. You'll miss way more than you'll get, I don't care how good you are. Yea, you'll get the proverbial 1 in a million shot, but I'd argue with S&P, I'll get 1000 in a million. That's not insignificant.

As for the argument about not having to pay for film anymore and that each shot is essentially "free," but that's not reason to do it, I lend you this. Digital darkroom is essentially free now also. I don't hear any of you complaining about that. You don't have to do that either, but you do.

I'm in my 40s, I know, a lot younger than a lot of you guys, but I did use a manual 35mm for years and years with great results. On that same note, I remember watching a documentary on some old German WWII photographer from Germany. It was a documentary on how he captured specific moments with his camera. This film has to be at least 30 years old, and I wish I could remember the name of it. Anyhow, he explained when he was photographing Hitler, he would time exactly when for instance how arm would reach the apex if he was lifting it during a speech, and he would snap that photo right as the arm was coming to a standstill before it started coming down again, and I never forget some of these techniques he talked about. The photos were brilliant as well.

Being a sports guy mostly, as I have gained more experience/practice there is less praying but still some spraying.

Calculated with my 5D3 and I have set my 7D2 to 8 FPS. When birding or other moving objects I like to burst because like others I like to pick the best shot. Also because I can and it is fun.

I have run into small glitch with my 7D2 which is only due to my laziness. I mostly shoot moving objects. In the custom settings "detail set" I have set

- the AF-ON to activate AI Servo

- the * to AI Servo, 65 point zone and case 6

I use the * for emergency shooting but I have to leave the drive on high speed continuous. I still like to use the shutter button for stills which results in 2 or 3 additional frames which I just delete later.

I have posted a requests to Canon on various forums to add drive mode to the detail set in a FW update and hopefully they will but I doubt it. I don't know what they read or where they get their info for updates. I guess mostly cameras sent for repair and designated testers?

when you have paying clients and you need to get shots that they will be 'very' happy paying you for, you need more spraying and less praying so to speak

it is also a branding thing that you want to give them the very best shots, not just the 93% really good shots, and with that single factor in mind, if you have the fps to spare and extra memory cards and batteries, then you just take those extra shots hoping that everything lines up perfectly in one of them

this also affects your PP as you know here come the 10 shots that you took and you then fly through the 10 looking for the top few, rate them in LR for example, and then when everything is rated pull up those and further reduce them again

if adults are posing you can get away with a single shot but the risks are high and you also require time to check the picture to look for blinking so in that time you can take another 5 pictures and for sure there should be more than one good one (and I'm not talking about 10fps with a 7D2 spraying at a posing, non moving adult) but 8 pictures taken relatively quickly (tight, wide, vertical, horizontal, slightly change of angle, different pose, change angle again, different pose) with a 24-70 as an example.

with sports, you almost can't have enough fps and AF accuracy at high fps during those critical moments

I actually do take several shots in succession for wide, long and different angles. It's a little different than 12 pics of the same framed object. I make the argument that in some cases, just holding the shitter down takes some of the skill out. This is of course, just one guys opinion.

WilsonFlyer wrote in post #17712229
Let's spice this up a bit.

OK. Here's a argument to the argument.

If you think that S&P is only going to get the moment just before and just after the action and you think you can do a better job of catching the exact moment manually, you are just fooling yourself. You'll miss way more than you'll get, I don't care how good you are. Yea, you'll get the proverbial 1 in a million shot, but I'd argue with S&P, I'll get 1000 in a million. That's not insignificant.

As for the argument about not having to pay for film anymore and that each shot is essentially "free," but that's not reason to do it, I lend you this. Digital darkroom is essentially free now also. I don't hear any of you complaining about that. You don't have to do that either, but you do.

That equates to 1/1000 which isn't worth getting out of bed for

I shoot a ton of equestrian at the professional level. There is less than 1/10th of a second to catch the optimal shot.... Here is the technique that has worked best for me.
I lock focus on the rail, preframe the jump in my viewfinder and shoot in burst of 3 with my D4, 300 f2.8, on a monopod. I shoot a ton of sports professionally and I almost always plan my shots, but shoot in burst of three. Keep in mind I am shooting at 10 frames per second with the Nikon D4