Shooting in Burst Mode

Much of the shooting you'll be doing in sports photography will require you to take bursts of shots (four or more shots per second) in order to make sure you get the shot while a play is in motion. So, you'll need to set your camera to shoot multiple shots while you hold down the shutter button (this is called burst mode on some digital cameras). By default, most cameras shoot one frame at a time, so you'll have to switch this burst mode on.

On Nikon cameras, you can switch the camera's mode to continuous (where holding down the shutter release takes multiple photos) by holding down the shooting mode button (found to the left of the viewfinder) and rotating the main command dial until you see an icon of a stack of photos in the top right of the camera's LCD monitor.

On Canon cameras, press the Drive•ISO button (which appears just in front of the LCD panel on the top-right side of the camera), then rotate the main dial (just behind the shutter release button) until you see an icon that looks like a stack of photos on the right side of the LCD panel. If you have a 30D, you can switch to high-speed continuous shooting mode by rotating the main dial until you see an H next to the stack of photos icon.

Now, you can simply hold down the shutter button to fire multiple shots.