If you’re at a sporting event or photographing your grandfather blowing out the birthday candles on his cake, you’ll have to be pretty quick on your camera to capture the moment at just the right moment. DSLR cameras have a fairly fast frame rate, capable of shooting around eight frames per second, and sometimes even more, to capture a moment at just the right time. However, most people do not have a DSLR.
Fortunately, iOS 7 comes with a new “Burst Mode” that lets you take multiple photos one after the other in a matter of seconds. This feature is available on iPhone 4 and newer models, but only newer iPhones can shoot at 10 frames per second (yes, 10!). Older iPhones can only shoot 2-3 frames per second. Here’s how to use Burst Mode to capture the perfect moment during fast-paced action.
Using Burst Mode
Open the Camera app and make sure you’re in a photo-taking mode. The different modes are listed at the bottom right of the shutter button. Swipe left or right to change modes. Burst Mode is not actually a mod on the list; it’s just something that’s built in when you start taking pictures.
Point your camera at a fast-moving subject and instead of tapping and releasing the shutter, press and hold it to activate Burst Mode. It will start taking a ton of photos in a second, and if you’re using an iPhone 5s it will give you a counter of how many photos were taken (it’ll also make an annoying, constant shutter sound), but if you’re using an older iPhone you’ll need to look at the bottom left corner where your photos are saved and each taken You will see small flashes for the photo.
Managing Burst Mode Photos
Obviously, using Burst Mode will result in a ton of photos piling up in your Photos app, but iOS 7 makes it easy to manage them all. Let’s say you take 16 photos at once and your iPhone doesn’t throw them all into the Photos app one by one. Instead, it creates a sort of folder in the app that takes up a single photo slot.
Tapping this folder will show in the upper left corner that these are a collection of photos taken with Burst Mode, as well as the number of photos in that collection. Tap to select the best photos from this small collection and save them as photos that you can share later and send to your friends and family. All you have to do is scroll through the photos and tap one to mark them for saving. After selecting the ones you like, tap on it to save your changes.
At this point, you’ll see the original Burst Mode folder of photos you’ve originally taken as well as photos you’ve added to your favorites. After you save your favorites, your iPhone will still keep the originals in the Burst Mode folder, so if you accidentally delete the ones you like, you can still access them.
