Burst Mode: How Continuous Shooting Works and When to Use It

Burst mode, also called continuous shooting, makes your camera take photos one after another for as long as you hold the shutter button down. The number of photos it can take each second is the burst rate, measured in frames per second (fps), and it ranges from about 3 fps on basic cameras to 30 fps or more on fast ones.

You use burst mode when the best moment is too brief to time with a single press: a bird leaving a branch, a ball meeting a bat, a child’s laugh. Instead of one guess, you get a short run of frames and choose the best one later. A single frame from a burst is often called a burst shot, and the whole run a burst sequence.

How to Turn On Burst Mode

On most cameras burst mode lives in the drive mode setting, which controls what happens when you press the shutter. It may have its own button or dial (often marked with a stack of rectangles), or sit in the quick menu. The usual choices are:

• Single shot: one photo per press.
• Continuous low: a slower burst, useful when you want a few frames without hundreds of files.
• Continuous high: the camera’s fastest burst with the mechanical shutter.
• Continuous high with the electronic shutter: on many mirrorless cameras, a faster and silent burst, with some trade-offs covered below.
• Self-timer: sometimes grouped here, and some cameras can fire a short burst after the timer.

Pick a continuous setting, then press and hold the shutter button. The camera keeps shooting until you let go or its memory fills. On phones, burst is usually triggered by holding the shutter button or sliding it to one side, depending on the phone; the frames are saved as a group so you can pick the keepers.

Burst Rate: What the Numbers Mean

The burst rate tells you how close together the frames are in time. That matters more than the raw number, because it decides whether the exact moment you want falls on a frame or between two of them.

Ten meters per second is roughly a fast sprinter. Even at 10 fps, the runner travels a full meter between frames, so a foot strike or the instant a ball leaves a hand can fall in the gap. A fast burst raises your odds; it does not remove the need to anticipate. Start the burst just before the moment you expect, not when you see it, because your reaction time and the camera’s shutter lag both add delay.

As a rough guide, 3 to 5 fps is enough for people moving at walking pace, kids playing and casual events. Around 8 to 12 fps suits most sports and wildlife. Rates of 20 fps and above help with birds in flight, racquet sports and other very short, unpredictable peaks.

The Buffer: Why Bursts Slow Down

The camera cannot write every frame to the memory card as fast as it shoots. Each frame goes first into the buffer, a block of fast memory inside the camera, and is then copied to the card. When the buffer fills, the burst slows to the speed the card can accept, or stops until there is room.

Three things decide how long you can shoot before that happens:

• File format. RAW files are several times larger than JPEGs, so a camera that can shoot JPEGs almost without pause may manage only a few dozen RAW frames. Some cameras offer compressed RAW, which produces smaller files and lets the buffer hold more frames.
• Card speed. A faster card empties the buffer sooner, so you get back to full speed quicker after a long burst. The card’s minimum sustained write speed is what counts, not the headline read speed. Choosing the right memory card explains the speed ratings.
• The camera. Buffer size varies a great deal between models, and the manufacturer’s specifications usually list how many frames it holds in each format.

Most cameras show the number of frames left in the buffer in the viewfinder while you shoot. Watch it during a long sequence, and do not open the card door or switch off while the card light is on.

Pre-Capture: Frames From Before You Press

Some cameras offer a pre-capture mode, sometimes called a rolling buffer. While you half-press the shutter, the camera records frames continuously and keeps only the last second or so. When you press fully, it saves those earlier frames along with the burst that follows, so a moment that happened while you were reacting is still on the card. It usually needs the electronic shutter, uses more battery, and on some cameras runs at a lower rate or in JPEG only.

Always pressing a fraction too late? Rolling buffer explains how pre-capture works, where it helps, and its limits.

Mechanical vs Electronic Shutter in Burst Mode

Many mirrorless cameras reach their fastest burst rates only with the electronic shutter, because nothing has to move. It is also silent, which helps at weddings, performances and with nervous wildlife. The catch is that most sensors read out one row at a time, so fast-moving subjects or a fast pan can lean or bend (rolling shutter skew), and artificial lights can leave bands across the frame. Flash often cannot be used with the electronic shutter, and where it can, the flash needs time to recharge between frames, so flash and fast bursts rarely go together.

The mechanical shutter avoids skew and works with flash, at the cost of a slower top speed, noise and wear on the shutter.

Seeing bent golf clubs or leaning propellers in your bursts? Mechanical vs electronic shutter covers readout time, skew, banding and which mode suits which situation.

Settings That Make Burst Mode Work

Burst mode only gives you more frames. Whether those frames are sharp depends on the rest of your settings.

• Continuous autofocus. Set focus to continuous (called AF-C or AI Servo) so the camera keeps adjusting focus between frames as the subject moves. In single-shot focus, focus locks on the first frame and later frames drift out of focus as the distance changes. Autofocus explains the modes and area settings.
• A fast shutter speed. A high burst rate does not freeze motion within each frame; the shutter speed does. Start around 1/500 s for people in action, 1/1000 s for fast sports, and 1/2000 s or faster for birds in flight.
• Enough light, or a higher ISO. Fast shutter speeds need light. Open the aperture and raise the ISO before you slow the shutter, since a little noise is easier to live with than blur.
• Fixed exposure where possible. In changing light, manual exposure with auto ISO keeps the shutter speed where you set it. Some cameras slow their burst when they have to recalculate exposure or focus for every frame, which the specifications may mention.

Not sure which shutter speed freezes your subject? Freeze motion covers the exposure trade-off and what to do when the shutter alone is not enough.

When to Use Burst Mode

• Sports. Peak action, the ball on the bat, a player’s expression at the moment of contact, all last a fraction of a second.
• Wildlife and birds. Takeoffs, landings and wing positions change too fast to time by hand. A burst also helps catch a sharp frame when a long lens and a moving animal make focus uncertain.
• Children and pets. They move unpredictably and their expressions change constantly. Short bursts give you a choice of faces.
• Group photos. Someone always blinks. Three to five frames make it likely that one has every pair of eyes open.
• Street photography. A short burst as a person steps into a gap or a gesture develops gives you options on the exact stride or pose.
• Handheld shots in low light. When the shutter speed is slow, a burst of three or four frames often contains one that is sharper than the rest, because the first press shakes the camera most.

Burst mode adds little for landscapes, architecture, still life and most posed portraits, where the scene waits for you. It also works against you with flash, since most flashes cannot recharge fast enough to fire on every frame at higher power.

How to Shoot a Good Burst

1. Anticipate. Watch the action, learn its rhythm, and pick the point where the peak will happen.
2. Track the subject before you shoot. Half-press (or use back-button focus) to let continuous autofocus lock on before the action starts.
3. Start just before the peak. Begin the burst a moment early and carry on through the moment.
4. Shoot short bursts. Several bursts of three to eight frames are more useful than one long run, and they leave room in the buffer for the next moment.
5. Keep panning. With a moving subject, keep the camera moving with it through the whole burst rather than stopping when you press.

Storage and Culling

Bursts fill cards fast. A 10-second burst at 20 fps is 200 frames; at 25 to 50 MB per RAW file that is 5 to 10 GB. Carry spare cards, and delete obvious misses only on the computer, not in the camera, where it is easy to judge sharpness wrongly on a small screen.

Choose the best frame from each burst first, then compare those winners. Look at the subject’s eyes, the position of hands, feet, wings or ball, and whether focus held. Delete the rest of each burst unless a frame shows something genuinely different.

Facing hundreds of near-identical frames? Photo culling workflow sets out a multi-pass method, ratings and labels, and speed culling techniques.

Common Mistakes With Burst Mode

• Leaving focus on single shot. Only the first frame is sharp on a subject that moves toward or away from you.
• Treating burst rate as a substitute for timing. At any frame rate, the peak can fall between frames. Anticipate and start early.
• Holding the button down the whole time. The buffer fills, the camera slows, and the decisive moment arrives while it is still writing.
• Using a slow card. The burst may start fast but recovers slowly, and long sequences stall.
• A shutter speed that is too slow. Twenty blurred frames are no better than one.
• Using the electronic shutter for fast subjects without checking. Look at a few frames at full size for skew or banding before you rely on it.
• Never culling. Unsorted bursts bury good pictures and fill drives.

Try This: The Ten Minute Burst Test

Find something that repeats: a friend jumping, a dog catching a ball, cars passing at a steady speed. Set continuous autofocus, a shutter speed of at least 1/1000 s, and continuous high drive. Shoot five bursts of about five frames, starting each one just before the peak. Then switch to single shot and try to catch the same peak five times with one press each. Compare: how many single presses caught the peak, and how many bursts held a frame right on it? Finish by holding the shutter down until the camera slows, and count the frames. That number is your real buffer in the format you shoot.

Burst Mode Questions

What is burst rate?

Burst rate is how many photos a camera takes per second in continuous shooting, given in frames per second. A camera rated at 10 fps leaves a tenth of a second between frames. The rate may drop with RAW files, the mechanical shutter or continuous autofocus, and it drops when the buffer fills.

What is a burst shot?

A burst shot is a photo taken as part of a rapid sequence in burst mode, or the sequence itself. Phones often store a burst as one stack from which you pick the frames to keep.

Where is burst mode on my camera?

Look for the drive mode setting, often a button or dial marked with a single rectangle for single shot and stacked rectangles for continuous shooting. It may also be in the quick menu or the shooting menu. Choose continuous low or high, then hold the shutter button down.

Does burst mode reduce image quality?

Each frame is a normal, full-quality photo with the same settings as a single shot. Some cameras reach their top rate only with JPEG, compressed RAW, a lower bit depth or the electronic shutter, so check what the fastest setting changes.

Does burst mode wear out the shutter?

Every frame taken with the mechanical shutter counts toward its rated life, so heavy burst use adds up faster. The electronic shutter has no moving parts and adds no wear. For most photographers the rated life is large enough that it is not a reason to avoid bursts.

Is burst mode good for portraits?

For posed portraits a single, well-timed shot is usually better. Short bursts help with candid moments, laughter, children and groups, where expressions change faster than you can react.