Don't be a "Machine Gunner"

[runnah]

Nope, you're wrong.

Where in VT are you? I grew up outside Montpelier.

 

[MichaelHenson]

On another note. I witnessed this same woman after leaving the event on my drive home. She stopped on the side of the road to photograph a tractor cutting corn. I had to stop behind her to allow an oncoming car to go by, and with my window down I could hear her camera "click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click" for like 10 seconds.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahaaaaa!

 

[Mr.Photo]

Nope, you're wrong.

Where in VT are you? I grew up outside Montpelier.

Great people skills you have there. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I was merely trying to offer some advise, and you're making it sound like everything I've said is wrong. I'm sorry, but I don't have the time nor income to replace the shutter in my camera once a year or less when it runs out.

By the way I grew up in the St. Albans/Sheldon area of Vermont, and currently reside about an hours drive North of Montpelier near Morrisville.

 

[runnah]

Nope, you're wrong.

Where in VT are you? I grew up outside Montpelier.

Great people skills you have there. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I was merely trying to offer some advise, and you're making it sound like everything I've said is wrong. I'm sorry, but I don't have the time nor income to replace the shutter in my camera once a year or less when it runs out.

By the way I grew up in the St. Albans/Sheldon area of Vermont, and currently reside about an hours drive North of Montpelier near Morrisville.

I was being funny.

Oh yeah Morrisville. Nice area. I used to bike on rt 12 all the time and go to Elmore lake.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Technique and practice. Hallelujah.

I agree it's a matter of learning techniques and knowing what to do when. I did event photos for a local team, sometimes it involved speakers in front of the sponsor's sign etc. It takes practice I think to get into the flow of an event and know when to get a shot. Not that you can't do some rapid succession of shots I suppose but you can do without, I've done it plenty of times, with a mechanical film camera or with a digital camera.

Pray 'n spray's not a technique so much as what people seem to do when they don't know what to do and just hope something turns out. Hopefully the person who shot 5500 photos in a couple of hours will start to develop some skills or eventually will figure out maybe photography's just not their thing.

 

[Designer]

OMG!!! 5,500 frames in a two and a half hour, indoor event! Utterly laughable! She'll need a garbage truck to haul away all the rubbish! I have never heard of such ridiculous overshooting. Wow...what a waste of resources.

I wonder how anyone with a reasonable expectation of living a normal life can go through that many photos and select a few good ones. So let's say that she uploads all 5,500 shots, and spends about 10 seconds each frame to decide if it is one that she keeps.

10 seconds per frame, 6 per minute, would take her 916 minutes, or 15 1/4 hours. Add in some time for breaks, you're up to say 20 hours of just deciding which ones to keep. Then there is editing, if any, so add in some more time for that. Oops, forgot to pay the bills, feed the cat and walk the dog, I was so wrapped up in going through all those photographs.

 

[Derrel]

I wonder how anyone with a reasonable expectation of living a normal life can go through that many photos and select a few good ones. So let's say that she uploads all 5,500 shots, and spends about 10 seconds each frame to decide if it is one that she keeps.

10 seconds per frame, 6 per minute, would take her 916 minutes, or 15 1/4 hours. Add in some time for breaks, you're up to say 20 hours of just deciding which ones to keep. Then there is editing, if any, so add in some more time for that. Oops, forgot to pay the bills, feed the cat and walk the dog, I was so wrapped up in going through all those photographs.

Annnnnd there's somebody that gets the "waste of resources" concept. Hey, I've shot probably 100 press conferences/speakers. It's not "that difficult" to get a few decent frames. It's called "paying attention", and "timing". Good Christ...even at 6 frames per second, each frame is separated by 1/6 of a second! A fricking eye-blink is 1/10 of a second. As a kid in junior high and high school, I used to dink around with the digital watches I wore...I could reliably start, and stop, the chronograph in 0.07 seconds. That's seven one-hundredths of a second, for TWO, discrete button presses, not just one!

Firing along, blindly,like an idiot, at 6 FPS, that means exposures are 0.16666667 seconds apart. Krikey--that's basically BLIND LUCK. If one cannot shoot with better timing than that,then one sucks pretty seriously as far as having ANY sense of what is called "timing".

Take. One. Properly-timed. Frame.At.A.Time. Try.To.Get.It.Right. Do.Some.Simple.Math.

 

[imagemaker46]

I've spent way too many days sitting next to these photographers that don't even look at what they are shooting, but just shooting with the hope of getting one good frame. This isn't a new thing to digital, but it certainly has helped accelerate the blast factor. In Sochi this year I stood next to a group of Japanese photographers that were all using the 1Dx, as soon as they saw the skier they started shooting, I know that the first 100 images would have filled a tiny corner of the screen, the second 100 frames would have been usable with a tight crop and the final 10 shots would have been ok. I was playing with my happy snap canon t2i with my 300 2.8 and 1.4 on single frame. they looked at me like I was nuts, the difference was that I knew the sport, I pre focused on the flag and when the skier started to lean into it, I shot.

Photographers regardless of what level they are at, that lean on the shutter are using it as a security blanket because most of the time they aren't seeing what they are should be looking at, they just hope to get an image.

 

[snowbear]

Spray and pray.

I use it for flying birds and the rare occasion I want to make a stop-action video.

 

[Mr.Photo]

Spray and pray.

I use it for flying birds and the rare occasion I want to make a stop-action video.

 

[bratkinson]

Seemingly eons ago, I remember the introduction of motor drives to cameras. It didn't take long to decide that motor drives were likely promoted by Kodak as a means to get more film sales. I was shooting mostly pictures of trains back then, and I'd see someone with a nice shiny camera and motor drive blow a 36 exposure roll on the locomotives of one train passing by.

I'm glad my slightly older Canon EF bodies weren't designed to accommodate motor drives, or I may have joined the 'machine gun camera club'.

For what it's worth, I've NEVER put any of my DSLRs in continuous mode. There are times I may shoot 6-8 frames as fast as I can push the shutter button - mostly to get everyone in a group shot with eyes open. But when I do, I have to weed through the bunch of shots to find a good one. Needless to say,I do that as little as possible.

 

[CameraClicker]

You could get a motor-drive in the 1970's. The moved film at a blistering 2 or 3 frames a second! My CanonRebel T2i can do approx. 3.7 frames a second! It's a great feature. Between Image Stabilization, a good grip and burst mode, you can get a nice sharp shot at night, without a tripod, even with a relatively slow lens.

For 2.5 hours, 350 shots is a lot! I can't imagine more than 5,500 a day! She must be shooting JPEGs. Even then, she has fast memory cards and more capacity than I have ever carried with me!

 

[Village Idiot]

Meh. It's her camera, she can do what she wants with it short of disturbing the event itself.

I shot 650 photos at my last wedding, but about 50 of those were panorama shots. 300 of those were culled because I didn't need that many or missed AF because my 5D MKII has one somewhat reliable AF point. My previous one was 450 dropped to 350. Both of those included a lot of candid photos that I otherwise probably wouldn't have taken if they weren't weddings for friends.

5,500 is excessive, but since the OP didn't buy the camera, he can't really dictate what she does with it.

 

[Designer]

Meh. It's her camera, she can do what she wants with it short of disturbing the event itself. ..5,500 is excessive, but since the OP didn't buy the camera, he can't really dictate what she does with it.

I think his point was that she may have been under the impression that she is a good photographer simply because her camera can shoot in continuous mode.

It makes a neat sound, like the professionals' cameras.

 

[Braineack]

I use the machine gun when shooting cats: