How important is high fps when shooting baseball?

[ufjamolei]

I am purchasing my first DSLR and am hung up on a few details when deciding between the Nikon D90 and Canon 40D. I plan to shoot a considerable amount of college baseball, so I am wondering how truly important fps is? The D90 shoots 4.5 fps and the 40D shoots 6.5 fps, should this be a huge deciding factor for me? Please keep in mind that I am a total noob so I may be overlooking another key spec important for shooting baseball. Thanks for your help!

 

[UUilliam]

all that means is if you set the camera into continuous s hooting it will take pictures faster.. which i suppose yes, could be an important factor
the 6.5 will take a total of... guess what... 6 - 7 images every second meaning you could track the ball (if you learn to pan and follow it)
i have never seen how quick a 6.5 goes but my 450D shoots at 3.5 frames per second, i personally feel this is sufficient, only people who really want that killer shot use fast FPS e.g. in american football, if they want to capture the moment the ball leaves the guys hand they will start shooting as he prepares to throw (with canon 1D mkIII usually as it is 10fps, compared to Nikon D3's 9fps xP.)
so really depends on what you want to do e.g. if you wanna catch the ball hit the bat (with no space between them) then yes possibly
but you have to ensure your High iso noise reduction is turned off to get the full speed otherwise it lags allot...

e.g. when i first got my camera and tried continuous shooting it would go (* = shoot - = lag)

**-*--*--*---*-----*-----*-----*

but upon disabling high iso noise reduction (which is rubbish anyway)
it now goes
*******************-*******-******-******-******-***--***-*--*---

(not how it really goes but an example as close as i can get to it)

 

[KmH]

If you know the game you won't need to do bursts very often.

Here is a link to a comparison of RAW image quality, done by an independent testing lab. This does not compare camera features, only RAW image quality.

Pay close attention to the low-light ISO numbers as well as the overall scores. A bigger number describes more capability. Click the individual tabs above the camera pictures for more info.

 

[gsgary]

Shooting baseball the lens will be more important because you will need a big bugger

 

[Dwig]

...The D90 shoots 4.5 fps and the 40D shoots 6.5 fps, should this be a huge deciding factor for me? ...

The importance of frame rate is inversely proportional to the product of your skill with the camera and your knowledge of the game.

A skilled photographer who really knows the game doesn't need a motor driven camera at all. In fact, some of the best BBall pictures I've ever seen were taken in the '50s with a 4x5 press camera on sheet film (effective shooting rate of about 0.03-0.10 fps for a "burst" of 2 shots). One of which was on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

 

[bigtwinky]

I had the chance to speak with a photojournalist who has covered the last 7 olympics for a local newspaper (big one in Quebec) and has 25 years experience in sports. He is also the Montreal Canadian's official photographer for LaPresse.

He told me that in most situations, he actually shoots in jpeg, not in raw. He doesn't have time to process the RAWs, he needs to get the pictures to the head office asap.

So he knows his camera's well, knows the white balance, how to expose and so on. He was covering mainly swimming, diving and basktetball at the Beijing olympics. When doing diving, you need to machine gun in those shots and chose the best one after...they are moving so fast that you don't have much time to think.

I think he gets 9 fps or so, and says speed is essential to sports photography.

 

[ufjamolei]

all great info...thanks so much for your input! I don't think i will let the fps difference between these two cameras be the deciding factor, I agree that a large part is knowing the game. Thanks!

 

[polymoog]

I don't know how fast they move in baseball but I have shot football (soccer) with my Pentax *ist DL which has a frame rate of precisely 2.7 fps ... and a slow 4.8-5.6 lens. Mostly with this camera I don't use burst mode b/c it doesn't keep up or refocus in time in anything less than bright sunshine but you can do things like prefocus on a space where you know someone will be, or you can just follow someone with the shutter half dpressed so you know they are in focus, keep re-half pressing if they change distance from you, and then shoot at the opportune moment. You can anyway focus and take a new pic directly after the first one even when not in burst mode, you just have to release and re-press the shutter release button. But as the others say, this becomes easier when you know the game and the players, and can more easily predict when and where something is going to happen.

 

[Blank]

Baseball is one of those sports where burst can work very well. The game has alot of idle moments between plays, so time taken for your cache to recompose is mostly not a problem.
In the case of a baseball photographer, capturing that particular instant (im' talking bat on ball, snapped bat, stretched catch as the ball is on the tip of the glove), high burst can be very helpful, and IMO the higher fps, the better. You cannot set a sport moment, best you can do is anticipate and to get a shot that may make a cover, you need to give yourself every chance to catch it.
I walk away very happy, if I catch that exact moment I want and if it takes me 6 shots to get it from wind up to release, I dont care.

 

[c.cloudwalker]

I wouldn't worry too much about fps when you intend to shoot mostly baseball. It is not the fastest sport... Plus I also believe that burst shooting doesn't help get the right shot as much as knowing the game thus anticipating what comes next.

I would worry much more about getting the right lens. You're going to need a long and fast one. The faster the better so that you can use the depth of field to not worry as much about focus.

Of course, take this with a grain of salt as it comes from someone who is brand new to digital photography and had never owned a AF lens before.

I never did shoot sports but my work (mostly wars and demonstrations) did require fast reaction and quite often there was no time to focus if the camera was even near your eyeball at the time of the shot. So we used as much depth of field as possible with an estimation of the correct distance. Believe me it works great and is not that hard to learn.

Good luck with your prooject.