Saturday, April 20, 2013

Photography Report 1: Shutter Speed

Hi everyone :D As promised this will be the beginning of a new series :D The "Photography Reports". I firsted wanted to call them Tutorials but that would indicate that I had some kind of clue about what I'm doing (which I don't XD) so yeah-that's why I thought Report was more fitting.
I decided I would always pic one aspect of photography, google it, hopefully know more about it than before, experiment with it and then report to you the results. I hope you'll enjoy it!
So today is all about Shutter Speed.
When you're talking about shutter speed it is usually "measured" in seconds because unlike the name suggest it isn't actually the speed you're talking about but the length of time the lense is exposed to the light.
Now the question is-what can you do with that.
So I guess it is fairly straightforward-when the shutter speed is low, a lot of light comes in and the picture will be lighter. When it is high the light has less time to enter and less light will come in making the picture darker.
High Shutter Speed-Medium Shutter Speed-Low Shutter Speed


You can use the shutter speed to make you're picture lighter an darker-but that is not the only thing it is good for.
For example when you have something moving very quickly and you want a sharp image you want a high shutter speed. The reason for this is when an object moves when the lense is exposed it gets blurry. In order to get a sharp image you therefore need a high shutter speed so you object doesn't move too much during the time you are taking the picture. In this case dropped the dog  in front of the camera with a high shutter speed which created an image where it looked like the dog was suspended in the air!
There are many famous photos which use this technique-I'm sure you've seen ones where a glass is dropped and all the little pieces are suspended in mid air. The photographers used a very high shutter speed to capture that split second.
What's difficult about taking pictures like this, is that you have to anticipate when the object ist in front of the camera because if you simply react the moment will have passed. It takes a while to get the hang of it! :)

You can use the fact that moving objects blur infront of the camera too. This could be done to underline motion or simply make the picture more artistic! If the object you are taking a picture of is not moving and you still want a blur you can also just move the camera. This is what I did here:
 If only the object was moving and not the camera the background wouldn't be blury. Or if the object was still and the object was still the background would be blury and the object sharp.
from here
I found this cool table where you can read what you can do with  different shutter speeds :) click the link for an awesome tutorial!
Endless possibilities as you can see :)
Have fun experimenting! I know I will :P
xoxo Alex

2 comments:

Disqus for The treasure chest of Alex's Fashion