Spray and pray taken to a whole new level

austinado16 · January 28, 2013

At this weekend's optionals gymnastics meet in San Mateo, CA at their event center, I saw.......well, heard first, then saw it........something that blew my mind.

A couple of gals with Nikons were simply holding the shutter button down for the entire duration of each athlete's event. Nothing like the sound of a DSLR shutter hammering away non-stop for say, 90 seconds!!! Wow!!

Gary752 · January 29, 2013

Could have been that they were shooting for a fusion video. One was shooting stills and another shooting video, and they were going to combine them. Fusion video is the latest craze! I just watched a workshop on it, on Creative Live this past weekend.

GaryB

austinado16 · January 29, 2013

They weren't shooting at the same time. Appeared to just be a couple of parents taking advantage of the 3fps (or whatever) of their box store purchased Nikons............."somewhere in there, I'll get a couple good ones."

johng · January 30, 2013

Honestly, it's hard to argue with the approach for a parent. As photographers we try to advise people on proper technique but they don't care about that. If they take 2,000 shots and 10 turn out - they got what they were after. Quite honestly, I expect in 10 years that video will get so good that most people will simply shoot video and take still grabs from it for action photography. It won't be as good as a proper still shot but it will be "good enough' for mom & dad and a lot of web use.

perroneford · January 30, 2013

johng wrote: »

It won't be as good as a proper still shot but it will be "good enough' for mom & dad and a lot of web use.

Why won't it be as good as a "proper still"?

Hungry · January 30, 2013

I would think that they would get a few good shots - if they pointed the lens in the right direction, had the right shutter speed/exposure, etc.

The saying about the blind squirrel comes to mind.

and, in a world where few parents actually want prints of action (and low res digital files will do), this may be all they want as long as they are willing to put up with sorting through the pile for those few goodies.

puckerth · January 31, 2013

Maybe I should try this method. I'm finding gymanstics to be a pretty nasty sport to get good shots of.

johng · January 31, 2013

puckerth wrote: »

Maybe I should try this method. I'm finding gymanstics to be a pretty nasty sport to get good shots of.

A lot also depends on the level of gymnast and what you define as a "good shot". Beam is probably the easiest to get good shots - even level 1 has a pretty decent routine and plenty of opportunity with little movement. Bars has opportunity at higher levels but it's a very limited routine at low level - AND you have to be able to get in the right position. The hardest at lower levels is probably floor. The tumbling passes are usually awkward and the gymnasts don't hold their poses very long so you miss those types of shots. For the lower levels where everything is compulsory your best bet is to know the routine - and then, of course, adjust based on which side they mount beam from or which corner they enter the floor from.

ian408 · January 31, 2013

I agree with John.

I cannot imagine going through the spray and pray take. I've seen a guy who does this on occasion (shooting surf). I asked him once why he did it and his reply was to "capture peak action". OK. I get that but if you're holding the shutter down for 15-18 frames, how will you know what "peak action" is?

ziggy53 · January 31, 2013

johng wrote: »

... It won't be as good as a proper still shot but it will be "good enough' for mom & dad and a lot of web use.

perroneford wrote: »

Why won't it be as good as a "proper still"?

Video is normally a 1/30th or 1/60th shutter speed. While that can look pretty good in the video format (a little motion blur is important to keep video from looking too "staccato"), individual frames can look too blurry for still use, especially if if you're shooting sports.

Sometimes an HD video frame can be "good enough". Case in point, this last Christmas I was doing video of the Christmas Pageant at my church. This was also the most complicated presentation we have ever done, so the person who normally does both multi-media presentation and stills capture had their hands full with the multi-media stuff alone, so she handed the church dSLR to another person to do the still photography.

Unfortunately, that person didn't take any pictures at all. They just got pre-occupied with their own stuff and failed to get anything.

We wound up using still grabs from my 1080p30 video for the church newsletter. (Better than nothing.)

jmphotocraft · January 31, 2013

perroneford wrote: »

Why won't it be as good as a "proper still"?

Because if they were using this extreme spray-n-pray method, it's a safe bet that they were also on the green box full auto mode, which wouldn't select a fast enough shutter speed.

David Evertsen · February 1, 2013

austinado16 wrote: »

At this weekend's optionals gymnastics meet in San Mateo, CA at their event center, I saw.......well, heard first, then saw it........something that blew my mind.

A couple of gals with Nikons were simply holding the shutter button down for the entire duration of each athlete's event. Nothing like the sound of a DSLR shutter hammering away non-stop for say, 90 seconds!!! Wow!!

I have been approached a few times to shoot some Cheer Competitions here in Orlando at ESPN's Wide World of Sports. They average 5fps of images over the entire day, it is not uncommon to make 50-60000 images per camera per day.. These parents wheren't far off from what the official photogs do.. I turned it down, especially using my own gear for the pay with the expected amount of images..

Some of the tough mudder races have high FPS requirements for shooters as well..

tullisfireball · February 4, 2013

Happens a lot with "pro" rodeo photographers. They wind up with around 40 pictures on an 8 second ride, and all of them are out of time. I have told a few of them that has asked me for pointers, to buy a film camera where it cost money to push the shutter and their timing will improve very quickly.

ian408 · February 4, 2013

tullisfireball wrote: »

Happens a lot with "pro" rodeo photographers. They wind up with around 40 pictures on an 8 second ride, and all of them are out of time. I have told a few of them that has asked me for pointers, to buy a film camera where it cost money to push the shutter and their timing will improve very quickly.

I remember my first motor drive. MD11 for one of my FM2's. I loaded a roll of 36 into the camera and set it down. Camera fell over and landed on the shutter--that roll was gone in nothing flat...

bluesman graham · February 4, 2013

johng wrote: »

Honestly, it's hard to argue with the approach for a parent. As photographers we try to advise people on proper technique but they don't care about that. If they take 2,000 shots and 10 turn out - they got what they were after. Quite honestly, I expect in 10 years that video will get so good that most people will simply shoot video and take still grabs from it for action photography. It won't be as good as a proper still shot but it will be "good enough' for mom & dad and a lot of web use.

John is correct!, already here in the UK SKY Sports are working with TV cameras with cutting edge technology which produce perfectly acceptable stills cuts for newspapers etc so I too see a time when only the TV crews will need to be at a game & all publishing work will go through them!.
This equipment I'm sure will filter down to the masses as well.:cry. Kind regards Graham.

Dooginfif20 · February 5, 2013

austinado16 wrote: »

A couple of gals with Nikons were simply holding the shutter button down for the entire duration of each athlete's event. Nothing like the sound of a DSLR shutter hammering away non-stop for say, 90 seconds!!! Wow!!

What is the purpose of saying that they are using Nikons? Is it more likely that the owner of Nikon is less a professional then someone who owns a Canon? Why judge people who are taking pictures the way they want to. So they arent as cool as you are with your Canon 7D, but do you think they really care? Get over it and worry about the only person that really matters and thats yourself.

CookieS · February 19, 2013

try being the official photographer at a horse event and one mom stands 20 feet from me and motor drives her LOUD Canon mark 3 machine gunnin in my ear the ENTIRE time many times for a whole division. drives me batty. her excuse......Im practicing for my daughter, yeah thats practice. just byuy a video already, sigh.

jhefti · February 20, 2013

Last year at a youth soccer game there was a dad with a Canon 1D body who took 8-10 bursts per stride of the player. Mostly he was just taking shots of players running around, but in the minute or so I was close enough to hear him, he must have fired off 300+ shots! Don't envy him doing the post.

This year I've been in a competition with myself to see how FEW total shots I can take at an event. I'm down to about 300 total for college and pro basketball, with submitted takes of 50-70 shots. Oddly, my sales are up!

I started shooting with a 5D2, so spray and pray was not really an option. I learned to time my shots, and overall this works better for a whole host of reasons.

Spray and pray taken to a whole new level

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