rfpio full form, rfpio is an acronym for “rapid fire” and refers to the ability that some cameras have in which they can shoot multiple frames per second.
The full form of rfps gives us insight as what type of photographs one might expect from such a device: rapid-fire pictures.
The term “rapid fire” is most commonly used in the context of long exposure photography. It refers to a technique most often used with very long exposures where multiple shots are captured, each at longer than usual shutter speeds, and then “stacked” in post-processing to yield even greater dynamic range or detail than is possible by using just a single long exposure.
In short, it is a way to increase image quality in [a] very [b] limited [c] post-processing time window.
Although not officially part of the photographers’ vocabulary, this technique has been around and used for many years and is still employed by some photographers (with reasonable success) to overcome the limitations of what we would normally consider today as high end cameras. The GoPro community has even developed iPhone apps for this sort of use case .
What if you were told that there’s a better way to capture such imagery? The reason why I’m referring to such super fast captures as “rapid fire” photography rather than just “high speed photography” is because… it isn’t really about the number of frames per second.
The subject of this article is about what happens in between each frame. It is time itself that defines the requirements for post-processing when you are aiming to stack multiple images into a single high quality image.
Perhaps “inter-frame stacking” would be a more appropriate term to define such imagery but I prefer the simpler four letter acronym over the longer phrase.
So why not shoot even faster? The most commonly used argument against rfpio shooting, or at least against trying to actively exploit it, is concern over motion blur/ghosting which can appear in captured images during super fast captures.
Some photographers do not want anything to do with capturing images that will require any form of additional processing, especially when it comes to removing artefacts, most notably motion blur.