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I've heard that sports and wildlife photographers need cameras that can take lots of photos in a second in the burst mode.

But why? Yes, simple question — but why?

Strictly speaking, one does not need high FPS burst modes for sports or wildlife, but rather they are useful tools that open up more options.

I've shot sports in the last few years with a Canon 7D, typically using 5-8 frame bursts (at I think 8fps) at a time, and I've also used a medium format manual focus camera.

Both methods have produced great images, but with a burst of photos I walk away with a number of images I can choose from that best represent the moment. (ie, picking between two nearly identical photos, one where a player is halfway through blinking, or one where they're not...)

When I have only a single frame to pick from, that's it. That's the one frame, and either it worked well, or it gets tossed to the bin, because there were no other options to pick from.

Burst mode, with a large frame buffer, can also help settle some minor motion blur - It isn't unusual for the first image or two of a burst to have a hint more blur than the rest from pressing the shutter button (and parts in the camera starting to move in an SLR) but the following images are balanced out.

For me I find this especially useful during panning shots - Begin following the target, anticipate the action you want to capture that is about to happen, begin a burst, and follow through across your goal image.

When shooting sports and wildlife you don't really have the luxury to stop and say "Lets try that one again" if you don't feel you nailed the image you were after.

Options then to be good.

You can always take a single frame on a modern camera that can do 10+ fps. It is 'kind of hard' to take 10fps if you have a camera that only does less than 1.

(As a side note, also remember to consider buffer size and clear times. A camera that can take 10fps won't do you much good if you frequently find yourself tapping the shutter button and hearing it beep at you that it is still clearing its buffer and can't take a photo right then.)

Because

• there is a lot happening in a short timeframe (movement phases of a fast animal or athlete), and you want to photograph it all

and/or

• the exact timing of the relevant event cannot be predicted, so covering as many possible times where that event could happen (and discarding the rest later) is necessary

and/or

• redundant pictures are needed because there are factors at play that could jeopardize a single shot (eg the other guys speedlites, shooting at unsafe shutter speeds due to insufficient lighting, unwanted highly mobile composition hazards (birds, insects, flying trash), banding-prone image displays that you need in the picture, light dimming schemes that can occasionally set you up for a surprise black frame).

In addition to all the correct answers about how fast action occurs, I'd like to point out two fundamental biological reasons for why you need burst:

• 100ms. This is the fastest we can react to a stimulus. Olympic sprinters start to contract their muscles 100ms after the starter's gun goes off. Any event which occurs faster than this cannot be captured by simply waiting for the event to occur and pressing the shutter. In user interfaces, this is sometimes also called a "moment." If a user acts on a UI (such as clicking) and the response is created in less than 100ms, we perceive the response as "instantaneous."


• 300ms. If a "novel stimulus" occurs (such as the event you were looking for), it takes 300ms to reach conscious thought. There's a related brain wave called P300 which researchers use to determine if a test subject has actually consciously registered an event. If you aren't an Olympic level photographer, and you have to think about whether you want to take a picture or not, 300ms is as fast as you can do it. Any faster response must be subconscious, which typically calls for training the response you want to see.

If you get into slow motion, the effect is even more extreme. If you've seen the shark episode of Planet Earth, you've seen some of the extraordinary footage they capture. They don't actually have a shutter button. They turn the camera on and it starts rolling with a 2 second long FIFO buffer, meaning the camera always remembers what happens in the last two seconds. After an event happens, they would press a trigger to latch the buffer, remembering those last 2 seconds until they got the chance to download it on the boat. So I would call that the ultimate spray and pray -- they continuously take pictures until something happens, then tell the camera to bother keeping the last few!