Shutter Speed

This may not be the 'best' example of shutter speed and how it relates to action but if you take a closer look you'll see the subtle details. I enjoy taking photos of water. It may in fact be my favorite subject. In the first photo, you will notice that the water looks more like cotton candy than the second photo. This is done by allowing the shutter on the camera to stay open longer. The longer the shutter stays open, the more the water looks like it's flowing. 

I want to give you a description of what the scene looked like so you have an idea of how this happens. First of all, under this cave, it was dark. That is usually how I like to take water photos. Shooting in low light, grey overcast light or using a polarizing filter helps block out the light. Because remember, to get the photo, the camera needs to expose the scene with the available light. So, if I were to leave the shutter open too long on this, the photo would be overexposed. 

For this particular photo, I took 8 to 10 photos at different shutter times ranging from .5 of a second to 2 seconds and everything in between that the camera would allow me to do. 

Can you look at these two photos and tell which had the longer shutter speed? 

It would be the first photo. On the second photo, you can see the water looks 'chunky' and you can almost see the drops of water. If this is what I wanted to accomplish in the photo, I could make the shutter speed higher and capture the action and the droplets. But I knew that I wanted a flowing look to the water so I kept the shutter speed open a little longer. Because most of you will have digital cameras, you can take a few pictures and see if the photo is going to be overexposed or look 'washed out.' 

For the settings on my camera, I did not care about depth of field because the background was close to the foreground. I set my camera on "S" or "Tv" on my camera dial because I wanted to control the shutter and let the camera pick the Aperture. Remember I told you in the last post that Aperture has boundaries but Shutter does not. When I set the camera to keep the shutter open for 1 second, I took a look at what the Aperture said. Your camera will tell you whether the shot is going to be overexposed or underexposed by making the Aperture red or it will flash a warning to you. Sometimes there is nothing you can do and you just have to accept the fact that there is too much light or too little light. This just happened to be at the right time. I did go back the next day to shoot with my medium format film camera but went a little earlier because the light was creeping into the foreground when I shot these first photos. You will find that sometimes when photographing nature that your first outing may just be a 'scout' for the right lighting conditions and angles to shoot from. 

For these shots I also put the camera on a rock and set the self timer so I could take my hands off of the camera so there was no camera shake to make the photo blurry. 

The next day I hauled in my tripod and used that. I also use a shutter release cord so my hands are off the camera. When you are doing a long time exposure even your heartbeat will make the photo look out of focus. Believe me, you're not that still when holding the camera for even a second. 

I will post more photos and blog on action shots next and also time exposures of up to 4 hours so you can get star photos. There is a lot you can do with shutter speeds and you can even use your flash to stop action at night while making your entire background look like it's whizzing by. Go out and be creative. 

If you want to try this out, find a stream or flowing water and shoot at sunrise or sunset or when the light is subdued. If you have a polarizer, use it. Shoot at different speeds starting at 1/60th of a second if you can, going all the way to 2 or 3 seconds (2" or 3" on your display). 

Happy shooting!