NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/644631
50 NEBRASKAland • MARCH 2016 My Photo Tip: Speed is Everything Whether you want to stop action or not, and reduce camera movement, dictates shutter speed selection. By Eric Fowler C hoosing the correct shutter speed can be critical in obtaining a quality photograph. But just what that "correct" speed is depends on many factors, including your subject and the type of photograph you are trying to capture. A camera's shutter speed determines how long its sensor (or back in the old days, its film) is exposed to light. In most cases, your shutter speed must be fast enough to stop action that can come in two forms. The first is your ability to hold the camera still. A shaky camera will produce photos that are not sharp. A tried and true rule photographers counted on before the days of image stabilization (IS) is the slowest shutter speed you can use to guarantee a sharp photo is 1 over your focal length. That means you can hand-hold a wide-angle, 20 mm lens at 1/20th of a second, and a 300 mm telephoto at 1/300th of a second. IS and Vibration Reduction (VR)-equipped lenses allow us to push those numbers two or more stops, something we could already do if we braced our camera properly against our body, and our bodies against a solid object. But in low light situations, when we've already turned up our ISO as high as we'd like, we still have to use our tripod, especially with long lenses. The second form of action you need to stop is the movement of your subject. How fast that subject is moving, the direction it is moving and the lens you are using all factor into exactly how fast of a shutter speed is needed. It will take a faster shutter speed to freeze a blue- winged teal in flight as it buzzes the marsh than it will a mallard backpedaling to land. Yet while many cameras have shutter speeds of up to 1/8000th of a second, you can stop most birds with a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second to ensure your subject and the background are sharp. But one of the main rules of photography is that rules are meant to be broken. So now you have to decide whether you In the photo above and at right, captured 15 minutes apart from the same blind on the Platte River panning with a 500 mm lens, a shutter speed of 1/640th of a second froze the cranes in flight and the background (above), while a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second left the background a blur and froze the cranes just enough to call the photo artistic (opposite page).