I’ve gotten to the point where I’m taking the bold step of not using the automatic setting on my camera. I’ve gone completely manual. To do this I needed to learn Three key words: Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO.
Today is all about shutter speed. Shutter speed is the amount of time that the shutter remains open. The longer it’s open the more light that is let in. There’s some pretty funky stuff that can be done both with longer shutter speeds and with split second shutter speeds. As you can see on the right, the two rain photos were take at the same time with two completely different results. One froze the rain (fast shutter) in mid fall so you could see the individual drops, the other (slower shutter) let the rain “trail” a bit as it fell and made for a much more pleasant photo.
It can also be used when taking photos of action to blur the background while keeping the moving subject in focus or vice versa. It can also be used to create cool effects like the lid of the soda bottle seen in my examples.
Any guesses on what the lightstreaked picture is of? It had a shutter speed of 28 seconds.
I'll be brave and make a guess. Is the lightstreaked picture taken of strands of hair? What did you have the soda bottle set on? I think it's great to be able to learn vicariously through our blogs. I guess that's the idea. Thanks for the neat examples.
ReplyDeleteI love the picture of the tree using the slow shutter. I had never heard of shutter speed, but it really makes a difference. I suppose you would use it when taking pictures of moving cars etc. I agree with Mona - the picture looks like it might be strands of hair.
ReplyDeleteThe soda bottle was set on 90seconds, after 45 I placed the cap back on so it only looks half there. I thought it was a neat trick so I tried it.
ReplyDeleteThe lightstreaked picture is of sparks off a campfire. The reddish glow in the background is the ambient light and the streaking was made by flying sparks. Some people use this technique with a flashlight to created streaked patterns or writing if they are really good.