Why the camera body matters when continuous shooting.

Baseball game I played in - this is a team member with a great hit.  Shot at 6 fps.

When shooting continuously, why does the camera body matter?  Well, it depends on what you want to get.  When events are occurring slowly, you don't need a high frame rate.  If I am photographing wildlife where nothing spectacular is happening, I can often shoot at 3 fps.  I used to do this when shooting film with my Minolta XG-M with attached motor drive, and it allowed me a certain degree of success.

Yesterday, I enjoyed playing my first game of softball in 5 years.  I brought an older DSLR and a long lens with me.  The D7100 can shoot at 6 fps, but it only has a small buffer in it.  The buffer fills up quickly, and when shooting large raw files, it takes time to store them on the memory card.  Every sequence I shot allowed me a maximum of 5 photos, as you can see above.  At 6 fps, I get about 1 second of shooting.

I have a D7200 that shoots at 6fps as well, but it has a very large memory buffer and I can take 20 or so shots in a row if needed.  The 6fps rate is better than what my film camera could do, but it is too slow for some things.  This is where a higher-end camera can help.  

My D500, the camera I do all my wildlife photography with, is a beast for both frame rate and buffer size.  With a regular memory card I can shoot more than 40 frames continuously, and with a CF-express card I can take 100 photos in a row.  What is even more impressive is the 10fps rate.  I have taken advantage of this many times photographing birds in flight and other active events.  The combination is effective.

There is another reason why the camera body matters when shooting activity.  It has to do with focusing.

Higher-end, more modern cameras can track and achieve a focus lock quickly.  When your subject is moving, you want the lens's focusing ability to keep up.  The combination of a body with a fast processor, many focus sites, and a lens with fast internal focusing is highly desirable.  That's not to say that lower-end equipment isn't good enough.  It just can't do the job as well.  It means that there is a higher likelihood of missing that great shot.

Although I have good equipment, I have never owned the best.  I still have much of my older stuff which, as you can see, I used yesterday at the game.  And the photos were OK, maybe even good.  Could they have been better?  Maybe, but in the end, I am happy with the results, and isn't that what is important?

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com


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