Using the drive menu to help improve your shots
We have seen that there's more to a camera’s drive mode than simply allowing you to shoot a prodigious number of photographs quickly. Camera manufacturers pride themselves on pushing the boundaries so while shooting speeds might not get too much faster, what will improve is shooting capacity, even more accurate AF/AE tracking and better electronic shutter performance. Indeed, we have already seen the first camera with a global electronic shutter in the Sony A9 III.
Focus bracketing, high-res modes and pre-capture shooting are especially exciting, giving us fresh photo opportunities to explore. If you own a mirrorless camera with such features, now is a good time to try them out.
The right step
I like including figures in pictures but they have to look right to fit the composition. The combination of dark clouds and a glistening North Sea provided a marvellous backdrop and all I needed was human interest. I spotted a man coming along the promenade studying his phone. I framed up and pressed the shutter button when he entered the frame, got a handful of shots, including the one with his foot just about to hit the ground. Perfect.
Sweat the detail
In this Venetian scene, the sun-lit buildings were reflecting pleasingly in the canal and the gondola’s prow decoration (the fero) looked great silhouetted against the colourful water. The gondola was bobbing in the water so the scene was constantly changing. Using a Fujifilm X-T2 and 55-200mm zoom, I set continuous shooting and took a few shots to choose from later. The shot I picked had a lighter patch of colour so the fero stood out well.
Aces high
In action photography, you’re often in the hands of the photo gods so it pays to shoot plenty of shots to maximise the chance of success. In this instance, the best shot came at the start of the sequence when the two fighter planes were in tight formation but still with some separation between them. That wasn’t the case with the following frame and the overlapping meant it was a failure.
Camera skills Manage the buffer
Take one or two pictures and they are written to a memory card almost instantly. Shoot a sustained burst and the greater amount of data means images are held in the camera’s internal memory, or the buffer, as they wait to be written to a card. Once the buffer is full, more shots can only be taken as the space becomes available, so shooting shorter bursts gives the buffer more time to write images to the card and free up space for more.
The size of the buffer varies and you won't find it quoted in a camera’s specification, so you only really get an idea of capa
