Exercise 4: Shutter Speeds

I took a series of photgraphs of my volunteer on his bike for this exercise.  I put my camera on the tripod and used my 18-105mm lens.  Getting a plain background was a little problematic as I live in London.  However, I found an area in Gunpowder Park in Enfield which I felt was suitable with just some trees in the background.  

1/800s f6.3 40mm

The image is quite sharp and movement looks static

1/400s f9 40mm

Subject starting to blur

1/200s f13 40mm

Subject is pretty blurred and the background is still sharp

 

1/100s f18 40mm

Subject is very blurred and it looks like a badly taken photograph

1/25s f18 40mm

Here the subject is very blurred but there is a sense of motion in the shot

1/13s f25 40mm

In this shot the subject appears to be cycling at great speed leaving a ghost-like trail

Lessons learned:

• The slowest shutter speed I used where motion was still reasonably sharp was 1/800s.  If you want to freeze the subject you would want to use a much higher shutter speed than this. 1/3000s for example. This may vary though depending on the motion you are capturing eg someone walking would be slower than cycling.
• The longer the shutter was open I ran the risk of over-exposing the shots.  I did shoot on a very bright day and perhaps an ND filter would have helped get longer exposures.
• Images with a little blur don't look as impressive as those that are very blurry.  There is less motion/action in them.
• I prefer the effect of slower shutter speeds on movement.