Continuous release mode is often thought only to be useful when shooting dynamic subjects that are in motion. The burst of frames in rapid succession gives the photographer a better opportunity to catch the exact moment they are trying for. But there is another, often forgotten or maybe unthought-of, use.

Often the sharpest images, in a burst of frames aren’t the first or last images. Regardless of how smooth of softly you think you’ve pressed the shutter release, there’s always some inherent motion induced by that that isn’t there when you’re holding it down. Some photographers will always shoot in bursts of three just to counter act the motion pushing and releasing the shutter release induces.

In this case limited bursting, coupled with a good solid shooting stance and image stabilization can be used to create amazingly sharp images given the conditions. For example the images in this article, were shot with a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS, on a Canon EOS 40D body. With the 1.6 multiplier the effective focal length was 640mm, alone necessitating a 1/640^th or faster shutter speed (I actually use 1/2x the focal length because it’s both easier to do the math, and because the faster the shutter speed the less camera shake will be recorded). Even with this lens’s stabilizer, that only get’s at best 2 stops of stabilization, so a shutter speed of 1/160- to 1/200^th or so would have been the minimum.

But by using my camera’s ability to shoot at relatively high speeds, I was able to capture short bursts, and pick the sharpest images from the lot. In this case it let me get quite sharp images with shutter speeds as low as 1/25^th of a second in some cases. So next time you’re out shooting, and don’t have a tripod, give continuous release mode a try. The worst you can do is not get the shot anyway; and you may be presently surprised when you find one or two sharp keepers in the results.