guys, i'm a little confused about shooting in continuous mode, and am hoping for some clarification and examples. first of all, i have a Sony DSC-F828 cam. here's what i found online about my cam in regards to this topic. my manual doesn't tell me crap! here's what i learned: 1. there's 12 seconds between burst sessions, and every burst session, the cam will shoot 7 images in 3 seconds. 2. After the that first burst session, the cam will stop to write the images before the next burst session is available. 3. The wait time between 2 bursts is 12 seconds if shooting in 8 mp mode and 6 seconds if shooting in 1 mp mode. It says in my manual that with fast moving subjects, focus adjustments may not be able to keep up. Erlik, you mentioned in another thread "It also probably says that you can focus in advance on the area where your subject is approximately going to be." could you explain a bit more how this would work. i'm kinda confused. if i only have 12 seconds between burst sessions, i'm wondering if that will be enough time for me to anticipate where the bird will be. ducks are especially tricky because they be on the ground then fly suddenly. or they can be in the water and just fly through the air to another part of the water. they're really hard to anticipate. butterflies are also difficult to try to predict where they'll be. You guys have any suggestions for me? I'd really like to try to take care of any potential focusing problems before i start shooting in this mode. Also, if any of ya'all have a string of pics you can show where you were shooting in this mode, i'd luv to see! thanks a lot guys!

I did play with F828 about a year ago, but I don't remember much anymore. Nevertheless.... You've got manual focus ring (which is one of the great things about that camera). Use _that_ instead of autofocus and focus on the area where the ducks are. F828 autofocus can be quite slow, especially in poor light. Anticipation can work or not, it all depends. :-) But if you use manual foucs, you'll at least have an area where the picture is sharp. With work, you can capture the ducks. Not all is sweetness and light with manual focus, and it won't guarantee a good picture, as you can see above. :-) Taken with Olympus E-1. (I usually don't use continuous mode, so I don't have a string of pics handy. Sorry.) PS. The bit of advice is from the manual of my Olympus 5050.

Here's a sequence I shot yesterday in continuous mode on my G6 (I used an animated gif) Hope its big enuff to see and get idea...it was hard to get this under the 200k limit I've read that some digicams, especially those with electronic viewfinders may blank out or FREEZE when shooting in this mode. Making it harder to track the subject. That's where I believe the DSLR cams have the advantage! Joe

Hi Sheila

The wait time between 2 bursts is 12 seconds if shooting in 8 mp mode ...
that means that the average time to write all that information on your card - have you tried a faster card ?
... well ... they are not cheap at all but the advantage is worth the price
about predicting where something is going to be (or happen) at the time you shoot is just a matter of hundreds of shoots (meaning experiment, or, shoot and fail, or, shoot again and again, and get the ONE in a thousand)
... the professionals use this technique with fast cams, lenses and cards :)
... they shoot thousands of photos (in a safari or in a F1's Grand Prix) and publish just a couple and ... the rest is trash :)
I wish I could be more helpful but I am just an amateur with a non pro cam :))
Carlos.

"butterflies are also difficult to try to predict where they'll be" And aren't we all thankful for this!

You got something against butterflies? Take that! :-)

Thanks to everyone for your responses! Joe...i totally love what you did, and it's been something i've been wanting to do for like a year now. i will definitely take one day and try this with some ducks and see what happens!!! thanks so much!! that too kewl! Erlik, good suggestion about using the manual focus ring. i will definitely try it, but i'm not ready for that yet. i like to take things slow when learning new things. Since this cam is new, i feel a bit overwhelmed with everything to learn with it. i appreciate your suggestion! Carlos, i haven't tried a faster card. definitely something to look into though! thanks!

I always found continuous focus on my Dimage to be tedious at best..... and the whole auto-focus system in general to be an exercise in frustration. My remedy was to put the camera into manual mode and keep it there. Erlik's suggestion is definitely the way to go IMHO....

i have to agree on the autofocus/manual suggestion. i have my camera set to manual and continuous shooting mode so that if i need it i do not have to toggle to get to it and i can shoot one frame at a time as well. the above sequence was shot in this way. focusing is less of a problem when set to infinity.

thanks for your suggestions. i am gonna have to learn how to do the manual focus thing i guess. all in time though. firestorm...these pics are awesome!!! no problem with focus here! thanks so much for showing!!!!!

no problem :)

well... i enjoyed looking at the pics here ya'll! :]cool .gif! have yet to try the continuous mode too... it's a bit slow... sigh