One of the features that was added to the Canon EOS R3 via a firmware update was a ridiculously high frame rate mode.  The fastest frame rate in normal shooting is 30fps (which is clearly ridiculous itself for anyone that has been photographing for a long time).  The extra mode comes with limitations.  Once you start shooting, autofocus and exposure monitoring are suspended so you get a lot of shots with the same settings.  However, this does allow you to get 194fps!!!  Yes, that is not a typo.  It will only do this for a maximum of 50 frames but that is raw capture – not a jpeg.  You get to select how many frames are taken which I have to admit I didn’t realize until recently.  I was shooting with a limit of 10 frames for quite a while and wondering why.  I’ve fixed that now.

There are relatively few times when this mode is actually useful.  The viewfinder does black out when you use it so, if you are tracking something, a little bit of predictive guesswork is in order.  If you were shooting a baseball pitch being hit, this could be pretty handy.  I decided to use it on the Blue Angels pair crossing during Seafair to see how things work out.  The answer is pretty good.  I include a sequence of shots so you can see what even this frame rate gives you for two fast jets head on to each other.  A limited tool but one that could be utilized.  I have also been using it for very lower shutter speed experimentation but that will be another post.