I must admit that I have become increasingly intrigued with trying to photograph birds in flight at 60 frames per second. This fast frame rate setting isn’t something that I would use all the time, but I think it is something that I may use more frequently as I get more practice with it. For situations where I want a ‘specific moment capture’ this frame rate will come in handy. This short article shares the first 10 frames from an image run of an egret taking flight at 60 FPS. The 10 consecutive images that follow were captured in 1/6th of a second.
The photographs were captured with a Nikon 1 V3 and a 1 Nikon CX 70-300 mm f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens. I shot in Manual mode using Auto-ISO 160-6400 with a shutter speed of 1/1600 which resulted in an ISO setting of ISO-400. A focal length of 300 mm (efov 810 mm) was used. As noted in a previous article, when shooting with a Nikon 1 camera at this fast frame rate, the first frame sets focus for the balance of the run.
No doubt, shooting at 60 frames per second will create a lot of discarded images. In my mind, having to potentially discard 37 images from a 40 image run in order to get images 6, 7 and 8 illustrated above, is a small price to pay.
If your camera provides a fast frame rate option, even if it is not in full continuous auto-focus, it is worth experimenting with it to see what your camera can produce.
Technical Note:
All photographs were captured hand-held in available light using Nikon 1 gear as noted in the article. All images were produced from RAW files using my standard process of DxO PhotoLab, CS6 and the Nik Collection.
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