In predictable situations, and as you say most situations are more or
less predictable (I should have written ("less than 1/10s"), I don�t
mind having a short shutterlag. Most slr�s are acceptable once the AF
is turned off. You always have to learn how a camera responds, and
doing this you learn to adjust for the shutterlag.
DagT
P� 6. jun. 2005 kl. 20.21 skrev John Francis:
I haven't done serious experimentation, but if I knew I was
going to be trying stuff like this I would take the camera
bodies with the fastest fps, because they usually have
the shortest shutter lag. It's a great deal easier with
digital, because you can see when you got it right, but
even with a film camera you can hear when the shutter
operates (although that can be a little hard when a race
car is going past you with the throttle wide open). The
trick is to squeeze the shutter almost up to the point
of release, and then just nudge it over as the car passes
some selected landmark ahead of time; by the time the
shutter actually trips, the car should be in frame.
The most important thing, for me, is a camera with a very
positive shutter release. Unfortunately this is one area
where I feel Pentax lag behind others; both the Nikon D100
and the Canon 20D have a far crisper release than the *ist-D.
Shutter lag isn't the critical measure (longer lag time just
means you move the release point a little further up-track);
what matters is repeatability, and knowing when you are at
the brink of release. An extra 1/50 of a second because you
had to push the shutter button a little further can be the
difference between a great shot and a merely adequate one.
But in general the faster frame rates also means a tighter,
more precise shutter release. The exception to that rule
would probably be the MZ-S; I suspect that would have done
as well or better than the PZ-1p.
On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 10:50:02AM -0700, Bruce Dayton wrote:
Hello John,
So an interesting follow on question is:
Obviously practice is critical to your timing. Do you find, given
practice, that some bodies do much better for you than others? If so,
which ones? Seems that there are two different issues at play - one
is shutter lag and the other is how fast the camera is ready for
another shot. I'm not sure if the second is nearly as important for a
timing shot. I'm sure it is important for follow on action, but not
for a single timing shot.
Care to elaborate?
--
Best regards,
Bruce
Monday, June 6, 2005, 10:35:43 AM, you wrote:
JF> On Mon, Jun 06, 2005 at 06:48:34PM +0200, DagT wrote:
A good and prepared photographer can react in 1/10 second.
JF> If you're prepared, and the action is predictable, you can
JF> do a great deal better than that.
JF> As most here know, I spend quite some time photographing
JF> cars travelling at a high rate of speed. The most extreme
JF> case of this is at the super speedways, where cars get up
JF> to speeds of 240mph - that's 352 feet/second. If I could
JF> only rely on 1/10 second accuracy, I'd never be able to get
JF> a shot with a car crossing the field of view of a fixed
JF> camera - in 1/10 of a second the car travels twice its own
JF> length. But I have managed to get shots like that; in fact
JF> I can (with a little practice) get the car within five feet
JF> of perfect positioning. That's a ten-foot window, which
JF> means I'm achiving closer to 1/30 of a second precision.
