[Ash]

Everyone's style is different.
Though what matters is getting that quintessential capture, which in the case of unpredictable subjects like humans, wildlife, lightning etc. requires both decisive and repetitive shooting.

There won't ever be a substitute for skill - even when the dSLR with automatic framing, shutter-release and posing functions (based on the best look the camera sees to capture) comes out...

[legacyb4]

Not to mention you also have to be aware on what's going on around you when focusing through the lens! Those audio cue can also help indicate when an opportune moment is coming up (ie. reaction to something being said, something happening, etc.).

[Parallax]

....................Each pose the "pros" took 5 to 6 shots, and these were "still" shots. When I watched them do the "candid" shots they still took multiple pictures. .................................

Exactly. If you don't take multiple shots you are much more likely to have a picture ruined by a sudden, fleeting facial expression, than you are to miss out on one that would make a good picture spectacular.

[Marc Sabatella]

My approach is to be s "sniper", but one who doesn't hesitate to take two or three quick shots in a row when necessary.

- There is no substitute for watching and anticipating. If you can't see when the moments are coming, you aren't paying attention, and you really have no business being there (that goes for whether it's a gathering of friends/family or a paid gig).

- DSLR's are loud enough that machine gunning can be disruptive.

- I'm far too lazy to want to delete that many shots.

- The buffer on my camera limits me to just three shots or so in a row, so I try to make them count. No point filling up the buffer then having the camera not respond when I need it to.

[Arpe]

It's abit of both I'd agree.

For my rugby pics I try to get the moment, then hold the finger down to get a few more, as you never know what's happening next. Then, if the first isn't so good, you have a choice.

[PDL]

With an SLR - choosing when to press the shutter button is critical.

If you see the shot you really want in the view finder - you missed it.

Snipers get better results on a cost per shot basis.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[TER-OR]

I've found while trying to take pictures of flying insects - particularly the ever-moving bumblebees and dragonflies - I get my best results with high shutter speed (1/1500+) and bursts of 3-5 shots. Trying to time shots with such erratic movements was futile. Yes, it's a lot of images to sort through. Birds are hardly easier, but they are larger.

I've also started shooting macro like this while manually "rolling" the focus. It's very difficult to judge just where the DOF gives you the best image.

[Wheatfield]

When my son got married I had an opportunity to observe the photraphers that I didn't have an opportunity to do at my daughter's. Each pose the "pros" took 5 to 6 shots, and these were "still" shots. When I watched them do the "candid" shots they still took multiple pictures. So, if I want a picture I am going to machine gun it so that I know at least one I will like. If it works for the pros its good enough for me.

This pro doesn't do his group shots by machine gunning, and I really think it foolish to mash the button and pray. You will do far better by taking several shots, each a second or two apart, than to take 5 shots in a second.
By all means take half a dozen pictures per group and per pose, as this will allow you to switch heads in post if you really need to, but don't think that bursts of 6 frames is going to automatically lead to something wonderful.
My method is to line them up and tell the group to say a word that ends in the "ee" sound (pepsi, whiskey, etc). This puts a little animation in their faces and the last syllable actually does put a smile on their lips.
I'll repeat that 5 or six times, so there is definitely a lag of several seconds between shots.
I learned this while shooting group grad photos for Lifetouch Photography. It seems to work for them.

[alohadave]

When my son got married I had an opportunity to observe the photraphers that I didn't have an opportunity to do at my daughter's. Each pose the "pros" took 5 to 6 shots, and these were "still" shots. When I watched them do the "candid" shots they still took multiple pictures. So, if I want a picture I am going to machine gun it so that I know at least one I will like. If it works for the pros its good enough for me.

Those pros aren't necessarily machine gunning it. You take multiple pictures of people, because they blink, they move, they get distracted.

If you get the shot in one take, great. But don't shoot extra shots just because that's how someone else works. They may also be taking tons of pictures because many customers think that more pictures means that you are better photographer.

[WMBP]

When my son got married I had an opportunity to observe the photraphers that I didn't have an opportunity to do at my daughter's. Each pose the "pros" took 5 to 6 shots, and these were "still" shots. When I watched them do the "candid" shots they still took multiple pictures. So, if I want a picture I am going to machine gun it so that I know at least one I will like. If it works for the pros its good enough for me.

I shoot weddings and other events where I often have to take formal shots. I routinely take three shots per group pose - but I do so for two reasons only. My main reason is that I want to guarantee that there's one shot where everybody's eyes are open. A very secondary second reason is that, sometimes, expressions will be better in one shot than in the other. By the way, I don't "machine gun" these three shots. They're done quite deliberately. I'm working with camera on tripod and using a remote, so I'm not looking through the finder at all. I take a shot, ask everybody to take a quick breath and smile again, and take another, etc.

But aside from that, I almost never use continuous-mode shooting. I actually keep my camera set to continuous mode, but 99%+ of the time, I take one shot at a time. Even back when I was shooting a lot of school sports (volleyball, swimming, soccer, etc.) I very seldom used continuous mode. I don't have anything against the idea. I don't regard it as cheating (or "cheating"). I just don't think it's very effective. And it makes much more work for me in post production, because I end up with lots of very similar shots and have to waste huge amounts of time trying to distinguish the best out of three shots, and often none of them are very good.

I try to give brides 150-200 shots after a wedding. I started out shooting 800-900 photos per wedding. I'm down to about 700 (from which I get the 150-200 deliverables). My goal is to get it down to 500 - in other words, to stop taking so many wasted shots. I won't get a prize for doing so. But I will save myself a lot of time. And even more important, I feel quite certain that the 150-200 that I get when I shoot only 500 with confidence will BE BETTER than the 150-200 I'm getting now taking 700 shots.

I read an article last year about a very successful portrait photographer in (I think) NYC. Think the article was in Rangefinder but I can't remember and I can't remember the photographer's name, either. Somebody famous whose name I probably should know. Anyway, the interesting thing about this woman is that clients come to her studio, they have tea or coffee and chat, she walks 'em into the studio and there's a little standing around and perhaps some posing. And in the entire one-hour session, she seldom takes more than two or three photos. That's all. And apparently one of them is a home run, every time. I find this inspirational. As a practical matter, I work more in the manner suggested by Ansel Adams who (if I recall correctly) said something like, to take a good photo, you must take many bad ones. But gosh, it would be really nice to be so good, so in control, that you don't have to take the bad ones and can go right to the good ones. And I feel really confident that if I COULD do that, it would mean that I had developed a better eye AS A PHOTOGRAPHER. If you take a lot of shots and then figure out later which ones are the best, you're not a photographer. You're an editor.

There are a handful of moments where I may hold down the shutter and squeeze off a couple shots at once. But they're uncommon. I will do this in the church at The Kiss. But you know what? My first shot is almost always the best (for a variety of reasons).

I have used continuous shooting to take photo series of some action, like Muybridge's horse photos. Took a series of shots showing an egret catching a fish that I was very happy with. But that is something quite different. There I really wanted ALL of the shots - or most of 'em anyway. It was like "still video".

For the rest of my shooting, though, there's something about the shotgun approach that seems antithetical to the deliberateness that I think really good photography requires. I have no problem with someone firing off multiple shots if it works for 'em. But I've tried it and I get better results by thinking constantly and squeezing the shutter only when I think I've got a shot.


Will

[cygnet]

While folks are now commenting about sports, wildlife and other forms of photography where a burst may be more appropriate, your original post infers candid party photos, like at weddings and such. And in those situations I really think the stealth "sniper" method gains you more keepers. Once you get good at reading people, understanding the predictability of the human condition, guessing where a situation will lead, and anticipating the right moment, a single shot is much less distracting and attracts less attention to the photographer. Those "bursts" gets everyone around looking right at you, and it sounds like that's not what you're looking for here. So it's all psychology and anticipation. Get good at those two things.

[WMBP]

With an SLR - choosing when to press the shutter button is critical.

If you see the shot you really want in the view finder - you missed it.

Snipers get better results on a cost per shot basis.

In response to "if you see the shot in the finder, you missed it," I'd say, that's why ANTICIPATION is key. The thing we need to do is SEE THE SHOT COMING. I have to say that, by total accident, my experience shooting sports taught me a good bit about this that I found surprising at first.

Note that you don't need to predict the shot coming very far in advance. But I can see some shots about to develop 1-2 seconds beforehand - mother of bride is reaching out to bride for a hug, both of them in tears. I have time to get the camera up to my eye to capture the hug itself, and if I'm fast, I might get the two people reaching out for one another, which might be an even more interesting photo.

Yes, you miss a lot of photos. Them's the breaks. I used to find this painful. Now I just live with it. But when you're looking for GOOD shots and not just for anything, you get better shots. It's kind of like dating. Some people are into quality and some people are into quantity. I suppose Stalin was right, quantity has a quality of its own. But he was a lousy photographer.

Will

[PDL]

to WMBP
It is true that anticipation rules when shooting events. That is why the really good people "understand" the events rather than "know" the events. It is also why the photographer you mentioned in your first post was able to get keepers with low shutter counts. The photographer was in control, not the event nor the subject, so having to shoot as if on the off chance you would get a keeper is not the intent or the result.

As for shooting anything with a SLR, we do not "see" the images we take due to the SLR design. But even more interesting - if you use machine gun mode - you see even less and have to rely a lot more on post processing - even to "see" if something worked out.

Knowing the flow of the event, the nuances of the sport/event and being able to predict when those unique images are going to appear. That's the real skill.

The Elitist - formerly known as PDL

[Eruditass]

Depends on what is being photographed. For example, sports is almost always sniper for me, because something like 3 ~ 5 fps has too much of a delay inbetween. Sometimes I take one or two right after it (for example if they are catching a ball or headbutting a ball or something) so I can get a right when its coming at them photo and maybe one when they are hitting or catching or right afterwards.

For photographing candid people, I like to do continuous, because micro expressions change so fast and it's a lot harder to predict.

[DanLoc78]

Neither do I. That's why I called it "cheating", not cheating.
What I meant is that the sort of person who avoids using
burst mode for the sole reason of their ego is probably also
going to view other technological advances (such as autofocus
and instant feedback) as cheating, and indicative of somewhat
less photographic skill.


Burst mode fires the shutter faster that "humanly" possible.
This means that before the invention of the autowinder,
something like say, sports photography, required a comparatively
large amount of skill and/or luck to get the perfect shot.

Don't you think that a veteran sport photographers were just
a little bit annoyed when autowinders allowed inexperienced
photographers to get the same quality timed shot they spent
their entire lives perfecting? Wouldn't it be tempting to call it
cheating?

One person with a calculator during a math test is cheating.
Why? Because there are rules to ensure a level playing field.
In the real world, the only "rules" are ones in our own head,
but it is still hard not to judge other peoples results in the light
of our personal value system.


[kurt]

I understand where you're coming from. However, there is so much more to capturing a scene than having burst mode. If i went and shot a football game with the same camera/lens setup as a pro sports photographer...I think it'd still be clear which pictures were mine and which were the pro's, regardless of my ability to use burst mode. That being said, it probably is considered cheating by some.