THE SETUP HOW TO SET UP 4K ACTION SHOTS

Get the right Canon kit and settings to capture the perfect moment of movement

01 CANON EOS 4K CAMERA

You’ll need a camera that can shoot at least 4K video, as this will allow you to extract high-resolution 8Mp still images. Cameras like the EOS R5 can shoot 4K at higher frame rates and the EOS R5 C can even shoot 8K for incredible 33Mp stills!

04 COFFEE & SUGAR

For our high-speed scene we wanted to capture the precise moment a sugar cube landed in a cup of coffee to create a fantastic splash. If you don’t have these items in your kitchen, why not try things like ice cubes in orange juice instead.

02 LENS CHOICE

A general purpose kit lens will work well for most types of shots like our coffee splash still life here, yet you could experiment with other optics like a macro, wide angle or telephoto depending on the subject matter you want to capture at high speed.

05 LIGHTING SETUP

Flash would usually be used for capturing fast action, however it would be far too brief for our video recording. Natural window light, or an LED panel, will provide constant and consistent lighting in every video frame/still image.

03 TRIPOD

A sturdy tripod helps us lock the camera’s composition and lock the focus in place, so that we have our hand free and can then concentrate on dropping our sugar cube and capturing the perfect splash as the 4K video is being recorded.

06 EDITING SOFTWARE

You’ll need to download your video into a program such as Adobe Photoshop CC or Lightroom Classic CC, which makes it easy to scan through all of the frames in your footage and extract the perfect moment as an 8Mp still JPEG photo.