Can anyone tell me how to determine, other than in-camera, if pre-capture was used to obtain an image? Anything in Lightroom or perhaps Sony's software?
Thanks.
pulper11 wrote:
Can anyone tell me how to determine, other than in-camera, if pre-capture was used to obtain an image? Anything in Lightroom or perhaps Sony's software?
Thanks.
More images can be seen in the A9iii Images thread or on my YouTube channel for the full sequences.
Mostly I used pre-capture to avoid filling the buffer prior to the action happening - and these aren't bird launches but when tracking a hunting falcon/jackal to catch the moment it catches it's prey on camera.
The idea here is that you want to use the highest frame rate available to capture the 1 or 2 seconds of critical action - you don't want to drop to a slower frame rate to extend the duration of the captured images because you might miss the critical frame - but at the same time you need to make sure you don't fill the buffer too early or you might miss getting the exact frame you want when the shooting speed drops to 20fps (on the A9iii) or slower once the buffer is filled.
Pre-capture basically allows you to start shooting earlier than would otherwise be possible and, once the action has started you can then start shooting and also save the preceding 1 second or in my case 0.5 seconds of frames.
Of course if the action occurs over more than 2 seconds you would want to slow the frame rate down to make sure you capture images over the duration of the action.
The Sony pre-capture implementation appears to be almost perfect. It would be nice if they offered a total number of pre-capture frames setting as an alternative to the time only setting. So when shooting at slower frame rates setting pre-capture to say 120 frames you effectively get 2 seconds of pre-capture and at 30fps you get 4 seconds. That would be nice for slower action, such as cheetah hunting etc.
duncangr wrote:
It would be nice if they offered a total number of pre-capture frames setting as an alternative to the time only setting. So when shooting at slower frame rates setting pre-capture to say 120 frames you effectively get 2 seconds of pre-capture and at 30fps you get 4 seconds. That would be nice for slower action, such as cheetah hunting etc.
Sounds like you should buy an R5II....that is how Canon runs precapture....15 frames always.....which equals further back in time the slower the FPS.
arbitrage wrote:
Sounds like you should buy an R5II....that is how Canon runs precapture....15 frames always.....which equals further back in time the slower the FPS.
The Canons will record 15 frames if you half-press the shutter button long enough. If the frame rate is set at 5fps and you only half-press the shutter for 1 second before fully depressing the shutter then the camera will record about 5 frames of pre-capture. At 5fps you have to half-press for at least 3 seconds to get 15 frames of pre-capture.
duncangr wrote:
Mostly I used pre-capture to avoid filling the buffer prior to the action happening - and these aren't bird launches but when tracking a hunting falcon/jackal to catch the moment it catches it's prey on camera.
I agree and have found this applies well to sports, too. There are often moments you know will happen, but not the exact timing. For example, if I need to get a clean shot of a linebacker launching off the line of scrimmage just as the football is snapped by the offense, I no longer have to either shoot a lot of unnecessary frames before in anticipation of the snap, decreasing buffer capacity for the action that happens after the snap, or miss the initial ~half-second of the linebacker's launch because my reaction time viewing through the EVF was affected by the EVF's lag.
Another example is covering a batter at bat in baseball. You can wait until they have commenced their swing and still get the entire swing (and maybe ball on bat).
Visually Oriented wrote:
The Canons will record 15 frames if you half-press the shutter button long enough. If the frame rate is set at 5fps and you only half-press the shutter for 1 second before fully depressing the shutter then the camera will record about 5 frames of pre-capture. At 5fps you have to half-press for at least 3 seconds to get 15 frames of pre-capture.
Yes, obviously you have to hold down long enough at your given FPS to hit the max 15.
arbitrage wrote:
Sounds like you should buy an R5II....that is how Canon runs precapture....15 frames always.....which equals further back in time the slower the FPS.
Hey I shouldn't laugh, you never know, there may come a day when I want to shoot pics of birds far away in the grass!
artsupreme wrote:
I'm curious to see some keepers and learn what uses people are finding for this feature in addition to the obvious (Birds & WL). Post your pre-capture images here.
Edit: all images welcome, including birds and wildlife.
It's very interesting that although the OP started this thread about pre-capture in order to "learn what uses people are finding for this feature in addition to the obvious--Birds & WL," almost nothing has been posted except birds, wildlife, and action sports.
The question therefore arises whether there is much use for pre-capture outside of fast action subject matter. I would think that there might be, but so far there is little pictorial evidence for that possibility. Why not?
I do not own a camera with pre-capture but the other use that jumps to my mind would be photographing lightning. I’d be stoked to see/hear more about that.
chiron wrote:
It's very interesting that although the OP started this thread about pre-capture in order to "learn what uses people are finding for this feature in addition to the obvious--Birds & WL," almost nothing has been posted except birds, wildlife, and action sports.
The question therefore arises whether there is much use for pre-capture outside of fast action subject matter. I would think that there might be, but so far there is little pictorial evidence for that possibility. Why not?
Laslo Varadi wrote:
True but we at least have it in jpeg which is better than the Sony A1 . But in truth, I have never used it even though my Z8 has it now.
Eh, in my opinion having it in JPEG is worse than not having it at all.
It's like saying "here, we know we can do the implementation right - but we're not going to give it to you at this time. hope and pray for a firmware update, or just prepare to shell out thousands of dollars in a few years when we save it to release in a new body"
artsupreme wrote:
I'm curious to see some keepers and learn what uses people are finding for this feature in addition to the obvious (Birds & WL). Post your pre-capture images here.
Edit: all images welcome, including birds and wildlife.
chiron wrote:
It's very interesting that although the OP started this thread about pre-capture in order to "learn what uses people are finding for this feature in addition to the obvious--Birds & WL," almost nothing has been posted except birds, wildlife, and action sports.
The question therefore arises whether there is much use for pre-capture outside of fast action subject matter. I would think that there might be, but so far there is little pictorial evidence for that possibility. Why not?
IMO it's logical that pre-capture most directly addresses fast action capture scenarios where one's reaction is often too slow to capture such fleeting moments, especially if they are sudden and unexpected.
I'll give you a non-sports scenario from years of event coverage: at conferences you often need to photograph someone giving a presentation. Often you're photographing people well practiced at public speaking who look at the audience while speaking. But sometimes they're not and instead look down for 95% of their presentation, reading from a piece of paper or a phone. When they do look up, sometimes it's literally for only half a second. With the EVF lag of even the best mirrorless cameras, by the time you see this in the viewfinder, you've already missed the shot. So rather than blazing away at 20, 30 or 40fps trying to anticipate when they're going to look up, with pre-capture you can just wait until that moment and then fully depress the shutter release. Sure, maybe you'll have 20 shots too many, but it's better than sifting through dozens of long bursts with hundreds of useless shots in each.
There's no point in posting a photo of this scenario because it'll usually be a boring shot of a person speaking from a lectern. But nevertheless it's still a useful application of pre-capture that helps make the photographer's life a little bit easier.
rscheffler wrote:
IMO it's logical that pre-capture most directly addresses fast action capture scenarios where one's reaction is often too slow to capture such fleeting moments, especially if they are sudden and unexpected.
I'll give you a non-sports scenario from years of event coverage: at conferences you often need to photograph someone giving a presentation. Often you're photographing people well practiced at public speaking who look at the audience while speaking. But sometimes they're not and instead look down for 95% of their presentation, reading from a piece of paper or a phone. When they do look up, sometimes it's literally for only half a second. With the EVF lag of even the best mirrorless cameras, by the time you see this in the viewfinder, you've already missed the shot. So rather than blazing away at 20, 30 or 40fps trying to anticipate when they're going to look up, with pre-capture you can just wait until that moment and then fully depress the shutter release. Sure, maybe you'll have 20 shots too many, but it's better than sifting through dozens of long bursts with hundreds of useless shots in each.
There's no point in posting a photo of this scenario because it'll usually be a boring shot of a person speaking from a lectern. But nevertheless it's still a useful application of pre-capture that helps make the photographer's life a little bit easier. ...Show more →
It is a photo of a quarterback after the game who happened to glance at the photographer for just a second and then looked away. Because of precapture, the photographer got the glance recorded, when without precapture he would not have.
This might bear on my ability to get fleeting expressions in portraits or candid shots that I would otherwise miss.
But I am still not sure that precapture would work for general photography. For one thing, you have to be holding focus on the subject for a while to get the benefit of catching the fleeting scene. This seems to require a different mind-set that feels antithetical to the way a non-sports or non-BIF photographer usually works and thinks. To use precapture effectively, you're waiting and staring at your subject for extended periods, as sports or BIF photographers do. Not the way most of us work with people or scenes. But it is something we might do some of time, or perhaps learn to do more often.
Also, precapture has been around on other camera systems for years. No one, including the marketing departments for these other cameras, have ever made much about it. It seems like a minor feature for most photographers.
For BIF, sports, and some other fast-action types of photography, precapture may fit naturally in to the photographic process and be useful.
For others, it seems likely to not make much of any difference and to interrupt the mindful and aesthetic process of finding and creating a photograph. It is hard for me to imagine Henri Cartier-Bresson or W. Eugene Smith or Josef Koudelka regularly using precapture, though I can imagine it helping to get some of their shots, e.g. Bresson's shot of the bicycle rider curving through the street below a spiraling stairs or the man leaping a puddle behind a Paris train station or Smith's of the little girl in the white dress running out of a store while a police car sits in the street.
I guess I am still mixed on its usefulness or desirability.
It is a photo of a quarterback after the game who happened to glance at the photographer for just a second and then looked away. Because of precapture, the photographer got the glance recorded, when without precapture he would not have.
This might bear on my ability to get fleeting expressions in portraits or candid shots that I would otherwise miss.
But I am still not sure that precapture would work for general photography. For one thing, you have to be holding focus on the subject for a while to get the benefit of catching the fleeting scene. This seems to require a different mind-set that feels antithetical to the way a non-sports or non-BIF photographer usually works and thinks. To use precapture effectively, you're waiting and staring at your subject for extended periods, as sports or BIF photographers do. Not the way most of us work with people or scenes. But it is something we might do some of time, or perhaps learn to do more often.
Also, precapture has been around on other camera systems for years. No one, including the marketing departments for these other cameras, have ever made much about it. It seems like a minor feature for most photographers.
For BIF, sports, and some other fast-action types of photography, precapture may fit naturally in to the photographic process and be useful.
For others, it seems likely to not make much of any difference and to interrupt the mindful and aesthetic process of finding and creating a photograph. It is hard for me to imagine Henri Cartier-Bresson or W. Eugene Smith or Josef Koudelka regularly using precapture, though I can imagine it helping to get some of their shots, e.g. Bresson's shot of the bicycle rider curving through the street below a spiraling stairs or the man leaping a puddle behind a Paris train station or Smith's of the little girl in the white dress running out of a store while a police car sits in the street.
I guess I am still mixed on its usefulness or desirability. ...Show more →
I agree with your overall thought process here. While I could see potential benefit of precapture for candid moment photography sessions of my nieces and nephews, I primarily see the benefit for sports and wildlife/bird shooters. For me there are many more important features than this.
chiron wrote:
But I am still not sure that precapture would work for general photography. For one thing, you have to be holding focus on the subject for a while to get the benefit of catching the fleeting scene. This seems to require a different mind-set that feels antithetical to the way a non-sports or non-BIF photographer usually works and thinks. To use precapture effectively, you're waiting and staring at your subject for extended periods, as sports or BIF photographers do. Not the way most of us work with people or scenes. But it is something we might do some of time, or perhaps learn to do more often....Show more →
I think there are two more ways you can use the feature for more general photography. One is for slow shooting hand held long exposures: instead of trying to be calm an then shoot with finger pressure and shutter interfering with vibrations, you can pre-shoot and press the shutter after having a second of calm. Second is about unprepared and unexpected captures: the camera may already start capturing while you still take maybe 1/5s to decide that you like what is happening, improving your reaction time.
PS: ups, this is supposed to be an image thread...
. But in truth, I have never used it even though my Z8 has it now.