Nature photography tip: Film your action shots

Thursday 29 May 2025, 16:32 by Rob Dijkstra | 2,681 views | 1 comment

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Some action scenes are almost impossible to capture at exactly the right moment. Think of a kingfisher landing or flying away at lightning speed. Instead of trying to time that one perfect shot, you are better off filming.

Kingfisher - f/4, 1/2000s, 400 ISO @ 420mm
Kingfishers often return to the same branch, so put your camera in video mode and wait patiently. Later, you can choose the ideal frame from the footage. At 25 frames per second, you already have 1,500 possibilities within a minute.

For the best results, film at the highest resolution, such as 4K, which produces sharp 8-megapixel images. Also make sure you use a fast shutter speed of at least 1/1000s to freeze movement.

A video player such as VLC helps you easily take snapshots from your video. This increases your chances of capturing that one spectacular moment without endlessly missing the shot.

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About the author

Rob Dijkstra is fotograaf, freelancer voor onder andere Zoom, Sony en Adobe. Rob is specialist op het gebied van filmen met de DSLR en systeemcamera. Zijn passie voor de Nederlandse natuur deelt hij door foto-excursies.

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1 comment

Paul eos wrote on Tuesday 3 June 2025 at 17:27 | reply
Hi Rob, great that something about filming is finally being written. But, there is one thing I still don't quite understand. I was always told that your shutter speed should be double your frame rate. So 25 frames/second would give a shutter speed of 1/50s, you mention a shutter speed of 1/1000s.
I extract the photos from my film via Photoshop, which works very well too.
Translated from Dutch.

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