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! 

Depth of Field

Usually I like to start you off by talking about the settings of your camera. No matter what your camera is, these days, you'll most likely all have the same settings. P, A (or Av), S, M. Program, Aperture, Shutter, Manual. Let's get a basic overview of each. 

Program basically means your camera is going to choose both your shutter speed and aperture to get the correct exposure for the particular photo you are taking. 

Now, let's back up a bit first. The definition for exposure is this: In photography, exposure is the total amount of light allowed to fall on the photographic medium (photographic film or image sensor) during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in lux seconds, and can be computed from exposure value (EV) and scene luminance over a specified area.

Now you are saying, 'Jay, what the hell does THAT mean?' Basically all it means is that your camera sees an amount of light. The camera then determines how fast or slow the shutter needs to open for that light to get into the camera to 'make' that photo. That "amount" of light let into the camera depending on the shutter speed is determined by the aperture. 

The Aperture, which is made up of those numbers like: 2.8, 4, 5.6, 11, 16, 22, allows a certain amount of light into the camera. That's what we'll deal with in this post. 

Each aperture number has a correlating  shutter speed number depending on how much light is available. The aperture has set parameters. This will be noted in your manual but for this example we'll say that our camera goes from 2.8 to 22. When you are shooting in Aperture mode, you cannot go outside of these boundaries. This is NOT the case in Manual setting. You may be shooting with the aperture "wide open" (2.8) and the camera is still telling you that your photo will be underexposed, that there is not enough light coming in to get a correctly exposed photo. 

Here are some basics to follow and keep in your head:  

The lower the number (2.8) the more light the camera allows in. The higher the number (22) the less amount of light. Think of the aperture as the pupil in your eye. When it's dark out, your pupil gets larger. When it's bright out, your pupil gets smaller. So, in Program (Auto) mode, your camera makes this decision for you. 

But have you ever been taking photos of someone and you want that person to be the focus of your photo? But when you shoot in Auto mode, the camera keeps everything in the back of that person in focus. And you notice there is a lot going on in the background to detract your eye from your true subject. This is where switching the camera to Av (Aperture) Mode comes in very handy. 

Here is a simple rule: The lower the number (2.8, 4) the less the background will be in focus. It will look 'blurry' in the background. 

The higher the number (16, 22) the more in focus your foreground and background will be. You'll have more 'depth' in the photograph. 

You'll see this example in both photographs as examples. In the first photo, I wanted to convey the vastness of the Everglades and put the Great Blue Heron into perspective with it's landscape. So I wanted more of the photo to be in focus. In the second photo I don't really care about the background. My focus of the shot is of the Elk. Nothing in the background is interesting to me.

 

There are a couple of things you should know. It's not that simple. Distance to your subject can greatly affect your depth of field. You'll notice this in Macro (or close-up) photography mostly. Also, you have to be aware of the amount of light you are working with. 

Practice shooting a subject in aperture mode in all the different apertures. Notice that the shutter speed is also changing when you do this. This information will come in handy when we discuss shutter priority and you want to learn how to get that 'cotton candy' look from water or you want to know why everything is so blurry when you shoot indoors with no flash. 

Your camera may look something like this inside: 

2.8    1000  = 1/1000 of a second

4        750

5.6     500

8        250

11       125

16       90

18       60

22       25

Keep in mind that hand holding your camera below 60 (1/60th of a second) may cause you to have a blurry photo. 

Enjoy and happy shooting, 

JB

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have. Shoot first, ask questions later! 

Time Exposure

The first time I shot night photos was with my good friend (and great photojournalist),  Chris Stark at Mount Falcon, Colorado. We were taking photos of the comet Hale-Bopp in 1997. We were shooting with film in those 'good ol' days' so we had no idea what our photos would look like. After setting up our tripods, we shot at various intervals of time and shot with 100 asa film so we didn't have any 'grainy' pictures. The lower your ASA the less 'grainy' or less noise (digital photos) you will have in your photo. My first shot was for 10 seconds. It was the best shot I took that night with both tails of the comet clearly visible, the blue color from the second tail and no star trails or overexposure. We played the rest of the night with flash and running all over the mountain. 

Over the years, I have tried to shoot the Northern Lights and other cityscapes. Digital photography has allowed me to get better time exposure photos and learn as I'm shooting. The above photos were shot over New Year's of the Toronto skyline from Ward's Island. 

The first photo is a 10 second exposure with the use of flash. I flashed Michele and then had her stand completely still for the rest of the exposure so she wouldn't be blurred. As you can tell, she isn't as sharp as she could be, because we move a little even though we think we are being completely still. 

Photos from the turn of the century always fascinate me because the people had to sit still for sometimes a half hour for the correct exposure. Most of those people had boards stuck up their backs to keep them from moving. 

The second photo is a 15 to 20 second exposure. You will notice that the sky is whiter than the first photo and this is because the lights expose longer and give off a truer color. The third photo was a 30 second exposure and is a little overexposed because the longer the shutter is open the more light is captured. 

I shot all these on manual exposure with an F-stop at 3.5 to 4.0. 

Most of the time exposure I do now is of water. I love to see that 'cotton candy' look of water in photos. I sometimes use a polarizing filter to help with exposure if the water is in sunlight but most of the time I try to shoot in shadows and expose for no less than a second. I will post examples in the future. 

The only 'rule' for shooting time exposure is to use a tripod or have the camera put on something that isn't moving. Not even an inch. I also use a shutter release or just put the camera on a self timer so my hands are not on the camera when the shutter releases. Even your heartbeat will decrease the sharpness of your photo if you are handholding your camera. A vibration reduction (Nikon) or image stabilization (Canon) lens always helps but use a tripod whenever you can. 

Happy shooting! 

Composition

Sometimes you only have a few minutes to capture a photograph. I always find it difficult to capture beautiful images on film that I see with my eyes. I suppose that's the beauty of photography. When you can bring to life what you've seen, as you've seen it and have it evoke a special emotion in people, you know you have a good shot. When I was walking by this park, I loved seeing the outstretched shadows of the trees in the snow, the sun setting in between the trees and the way the trees were placed in the park. Knowing that I needed a high shutter speed to make the trees silhouetted, my main concern was composition. I shot five frames of this in different perspectives. I like the second photo because of the shadows stretched across the snow. But I cropped off the top of the trees. I don't have enough of the tops of the trees to make this a great photo. The top photo I also cropped the tops of the trees but not as much. You can also see some of the shadows in the snow but this photo is more about the silhouettes rather than the shadows. 

I always tell myself to look around in the viewfinder before shooting. Just so you can see if what you are shooting is what you want. While you may only have a minute to shoot the scene, there is always time to take a second to look around to set up your shot so when you see the final product you aren't disappointed with a branch coming out of the corner of the frame. This also applies when you are photographing people. So, set up your exposure, look in the viewfinder, set your composition, take a second to look to see if you have too much headroom in people shots, make sure they don't have anything coming out of their head, make sure you have the tops of trees in the frame, take a breath and shoot.