Pictures and Spies.

I once read a spy novel where some KGB lamplighters were shadowing this French (or was it a British bloke). The book had these shadowers continuously photographing their target. What they used was not any ordinary camcorder, but one of them really fast SLRs with high speed film roll and continuous (burst mode) capability. And they were shooting in B/W. Why, I have no idea. But this basic idea of hanging around and shooting at high speeds so as to capture snapshots of continuous motion has been around forever in the pro world. It is only recently that it has made an entry into the consumer market. Again, here I make a judgement, because film SLRs have had this for a while, the speed depending on the rate at which the motor could drive the film (shutter speed is not an issue). With compact digital cameras, well what you pay for is what you get… so what sells for a burst mode is a low quality sequence of pictures. CF cards are typically faster than xD or SD cards. The principal bottlenecks are electronic, not electromechanical as in film SLRs. What matters here is buffer size and for want of a better word, I am going to call bus speed. For a small bus speed, the speed at which the camera is able to write to the card (provided you have a reasonably fast card) is the limiting factor, and most DSLRs will conk out after maybe 5 to 10 frames at high quality. A large buffer will allow more frames before you have to stop. Then there is what is called the ‘flushout time’, the time it takes to write to the card and prepare for the next shot. Most prosumer DSLRs do anything between 2.5 to 5 frames per second. A Canon TXi(for those with tiny hands) or an Olympus EV500 is good value. If you are feeling self indulgent, or have a benevolent rich uncle, think about a Nikon D80. I don’t know how the new Pentax is going to work out, but I have a sneaky feeling that is might just give the people at Nikon/Canon some nightmares. And then go look at the new Leica D series. And drool.