Photographing thermal mud pools can be challenging when attempting to capture erratic mud bursts breaking on the surface of the pool. Technology like Pro Capture can allow photographers to capture a wide selection of useable images at this type of venue with a very high confidence level.

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During a 2024 visit to the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, which is situated on the North Island of New Zealand, my wife and I visited the mud pools which are in the same area.

We had enjoyed trying to photograph the mud pools during previous trips, but this was the first time that we had the opportunity to use our Olympus gear (now OM System) at this location.

I was really looking forward to using Pro Capture H to photograph some of the thermal mud bursts, as I thought it would be the ideal technology for this phenomenon. And it certainly was!

What follows are 23 consecutive images taken with Pro Capture H shooting at 60 frames-per-second, with my Pre-Shutter Frames and Frame Limiter both set to 25. This allows my E-M1X to continuously spool images into temporary memory when I half depress my shutter release.

Pro Capture H technology locks auto-focus and exposure based on the first frame of the image run. Then, when I fully depress my shutter release it writes the images stored in temporary memory onto my memory card. All of the 23 images that follow were captured in a total of 0.383 seconds.

When we first arrived at the thermal mud pools I started using my standard Pro Capture H settings (i.e. Pre-Shutter Frames and Frame Limiter both set to 15, 60 frames-per-second, single small AF point) and was able to easily get hundreds of useable images. In order to capture a slightly extended range of action I switched to the 25/25 settings mentioned earlier. This enabled me to capture mud bursts almost in their entirety.

Many of us who use Pro Capture technology tend to think of using it when we are photographing birds taking flight, or capturing other moving animals. This only scratches the surface of this technology.

Pro Capture is also ideal when trying to photograph a wide range of other types of fast breaking actions that happen so quickly that our physical response time is not up to the challenge.

When I was capturing my thermal mud pond images there were 3 other photographers at the same location. One was shooting handheld for a few minutes then left. The other two were sitting on the deck adjacent to the mud ponds with their cameras mounted on tripods. They were there for the entire time that I was at the thermal mud pools

Both were trying to time their shutter releases to capture mud bursts when they were at their peak. I’d hear periodic shutter clicks, and the odd short burst. As they reviewed their images neither one looked particularly excited about their results.

By comparison, during the half hour that I was photographing the thermal mud ponds I captured over 1,300 handheld images… with a very high number of them being useable.

My biggest challenge when I got back from New Zealand was culling through all of these photographs to pick only one image run that I could use for this article. There were numerous very good image runs that I simply deleted to save hard drive space.

When using any technology like Pro Capture it is important to spend a few minutes watching the thermal mud pond bursts to assess the average distance that the mud travels from the pond surface. It is also important to try to gauge the frequency of eruption of a given spot on the thermal mud pool.

I used a 9 section grid on my viewfinder to help measure the relative distance of an average thermal mud burst. This helped me determine the appropriate lens focal length to use. I also stopped my lens down slightly to increase my depth-of-field… and used a fast shutter speed of 1/2500 to freeze the action.

My E-M1X is limited to 60 frames-per-second when using Pro Capture H. Cameras like the OM-1 or OM-1 Mark II can shoot at 120 frames-per-second with the first frame locking auto-focus and exposure.

Photographing thermal mud pools served as a good reminder that there are many action oriented subjects when using continuous auto-focus (AF-C) is not needed… and may even be somewhat detrimental if the AF-C is inconsistent in terms of accuracy.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera equipment  noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,451 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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