What are the downsides to shooting in ai-servo and continuous shooting modes?

[dubcat]

Hi -

I am taking pictures of children (mine and those of friends). They move around - so inconsiderate I was thinking of putting the camera in continuous shooting mode to increase my probability of capturing just the right image. I was wondering if there was any quality impact to shooting this way. I know it will hurt battery life and storage space but those are never really an issue for me anyway.

I was also thinking of keeping the camera in that mode where it is continuously focussing. I think it's called ai-servo. Don't sports photographers use this? Is there any negative quality impact to using this mode? I know it will probably hurt battery life - but are there any other issues from using it?

Cheers,
Dub

 

[adrianm]

I use these modes quite alot, there isnt any impact to image quality. The servo focus can have trouble getting focus at odd times... but if you think on your feet you can overcome it (doesnt sound like being ultra fast will be a necessity...kids and all )

as for continual shooting - this is great for candid shots, too often you can think you captured a great moment only to find that at that split second they blinked or looked funny due to motion etc....if you take a burst of 6 or so images then your 6 times more likely to have a keeper

The only problem with this however is that if your shooting in raw then it will seriously limit you in terms of speed and the number of photos you can take before waiting for the camera to catch up. My camera is very budget and i go from being able to take a burst of about 9 photos at 3 per second using jpeg to a burst of 4 at about 1 a second :/ suffice to say i dont shoot in raw when at motor racing events

 

[dubcat]

I use these modes quite alot, there isnt any impact to image quality. The servo focus can have trouble getting focus at odd times *** but if you think on your feet you can overcome it (doesnt sound like being ultra fast will be a necessity...kids and all )

as for continual shooting - this is great for candid shots, too often you can think you captured a great moment only to find that at that split second they blinked or looked funny due to motion etc....if you take a burst of 6 or so images then your 6 times more likely to have a keeper

Thanks And welcome to the forums!

I wonder what impact of having a flash on would be - i.e. can it keep up with the continuous shooting... I also wonder what impact it would have on my subject

 

[phototuition]

Hi Dub, Good points from Adrianm. Depending partly on your gear there can be quite a high miss rate not least because unlike racehorses kid move in extremely irregular way, like they're dodging bullets! With ai servo don't forget to check your images magnified up on th LCD frequently. I'd use single af for at least some of the shots.

 

[nilagin]

Make sure your memory card has a fast writing speed too. A slow writing speed will mean you will have bigger gaps between each shot, probably not so much a problem with people but a real pain with motorsport.

 

[TheNissanMan]

Make sure your memory card has a fast writing speed too. A slow writing speed will mean you will have bigger gaps between each shot, probably not so much a problem with people but a real pain with motorsport.

Depending on the camera, a lot of the lower-mid range camera's are controleld more by the camera buffer to the cards ability which really comes into it's own when copying the images onto the computer from a card reader. I've tried a couple of different cards in the 500D and don't see any real difference on anything above 15mb/s...

 

[dubcat]

I have a 50d and happen to have a sandisk ultra card which is quite fast I think. I'm a bit concerned about the advice relating to ai servo though. Does it have a tendency to get things wrong?

 

[Andy_S_T]

My camera lives in servo mode most of the time, as I'm normally shooting Kids, animals or sport. Not really noticed any drop in quality. Just need to make sure the camera, card and lens have enough speed to keep up.