Podcast #76 – Conversation with David Ziser – Choosing the right aperture
February 26, 2010 – 8:42 am | One Comment

This week I sat down with David Ziser to discuss a handful of topics including how to choose the right aperture for a particular shot, determining the depth of field for a particular shot, when …

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Important Note:
Due to our hosting company, BlueHost.com, not having redundant drives or even backups, during a recent hard drive failure all of the images in the articles here have been lost. The originals are available and are being re-edited and uploaded as fast as I can. I apologize for the inconvenience. -Kerry

Home » Shooting Tips

Capturing a sense of motion with shutter speed

Submitted by KerryG on August 31, 2008 – 1:56 pm6 Comments

A common issue some people have is getting their images to portray a sense of movement. Today we are going to look at how adjusting our shutter speed can help achieve the desired look that we want. For this simple example we will look at a ceiling fan taken at different shutter speeds so you can see how adjusting the shutter speed through an entire typical range can help you achieve the exact look you are aiming for.

Often we try to use the fastest shutter speed possible to help avoid blur but when shooting a moving object you sometimes need some amount of blur or it can look like the subject of the image is sitting still. In many cases you want to have the sense of movement in order to help convey the story of the object.In the case of the ceiling fan we want to show a little movement of the blades since the moving blades is going to be more typical of what you would see by looking at the fan once installed. We also want to show that this is a five-bladed fan so we have to be careful not to have too much blur that we loose all the details.

Let’s take a look at a series of shots taken at different shutter speeds:

1/6th Second - Way too much blur

1/6th Second - Way too much blur

1/10th Second - Way too much blur

1/10th Second - Way too much blur

1/25th Second - Better but lacking detail

1/25th Second - Better but lacking detail

1/40th Second - Looking good

1/40th Second - Looking good

1/100th Second - Not enough, just looks fuzzy

1/100th Second - Not enough, just looks fuzzy

1/200th Second - Almost no movement

1/200th Second - Almost no movement

As you can see the images taken at the two extreme ranges show either far too much blur or not enough blur to make for a good image. The image taken at 1/40th maintains a little more detail than the images shot at 1/25 making it a more suitable image for our use.

Summary

The whole point here is to get you to experiment more with shutter speeds in order to capture a sense of movement, action, or speed. By adjusting the shutter speed you can control how much or how little the blur effect will have.

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About the Author: Kerry Garrison is a wedding, portrait, and product photographer living in southern California. With 10 years of experience shooting products and 3 years of experience in the wedding industry, Kerry brings a good deal of technical know-how and can explain topics in easy-to-understand terms. Kerry's work can be found at http://kerrygarrison.com and on Facebook at http://facebook.com/KerryGarrison

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