31 Days of my XTi | Day 14 - Drive Modes

Hey there folks! I am in an extra great mood because I actually checked my stats for kicks, and people besides me are visiting my little bloggy world. Yay! Maybe I will yet become a blogger instead of a person with a blog....

So lets talk drive modes. What's this you ask? Basically it means how many shots your camera will take in a row. Discovering this little nugget a couple of months ago has been awesome for me, so helpful as I try to capture special images of a 1 and 4 year old.  The XTi has 3 drive modes, which can only be selected when you are shooting in the creative modes (even more reason to explore those guys).  They are single shot, continuous, and self-timer/remote.
They are pretty self-explanatory, but lets just go there. Single means you get one picture each time you press the shutter, and you can get up to 3 shots per second. Continuous means you can do the 3 images in a row per second, or a burst of shots (different amounts depending on the image quality that you are shooting in). According to Canon you can burst about 27 large JPEGS, 10 RAW, or 8 RAW + L.
Here's how you do it:
Select continuous by pressing the 2nd button down on the right of the screen and arrowing to the center icon. Then you compose your shot and hold down the shutter. The camera will continue to take pictures until the buffer memory is full, and then it will give you a busy message until it has put those images onto your memory card and has room to shoot again.
And lastly, the self-timer/remote will give you either 10 seconds until it takes a shot once you press the shutter, or just take the shot if you are using a remote.

Both of my sources seem to suggest changing your Auto Focus mode if you will be shooting continuously, especially if your object will be moving. I'll get to that in an upcoming post, but for now try it out!
 I was thinking of maybe trying to learn to make one of those cool little movies where you put a bunch of stills together, but I think that will have to wait until I have more time to spend in the digital darkroom. However, if you have made one and posted about it, or know of a source that has good instructions please leave me a link in the comments!  Also, if you have any cool ideas for others who want to try this out and just don't know what to shoot leave that too!