Exercise Panning with different shutter speeds

For this exercise I employed the help of 2 of my sons; Jack 10 and Chris 8. I had them running around in circles and playing on the Zip wire at a park in Cornwall.

I handheld the camera and used varying shutter speeds to get some movement/blurring in the shots and it's proven to be a great technique for giving the impression of speed and action.

1/100sec f/8

1/60sec f8

At 1/100 and 1/60 sec the subject remains fairly sharp with a slight blurring of the background

1/50sec f/11

1/40sec f/13

1/40sec f/13

At shutter speeds of 1/40 there is a slight blurring of the subject as well as the background which adds to the sense of movement. It can be seen quickly how movement in different directions is displayed by the camera

1/40sec f/13

1/20sec f/18

At shutter speeds of 1/10 sec and 1/20 sec there is considerable blurring of the subject and background and this gives a great sense of movement in the photo. The background can become highly distorted and smoothed and this helps focus the eyes in on the subject.

1/30sec f/16

1/10sec f24
This is a good study of the different directions of movement when someone is running.

1/30sec f/16

1/20sec f/18

I find that these photo's taken with fairly slow shutter speeds are very effective in creating an atmosphere of action and an impression of great speed.

1/20sec f/20

This last picture is my favourite and gives my son an elfish speedy look and reminds me of Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon as well.

Exercise Shutter speeds

In this exercise on shutter speeds I found a small but fast flowing waterfall to photograph. The camera was positioned on a tripod. I used my telephoto lens set to a focal length of 105mm(35mm equiv)
or 70mm on my Nikon D80. I set the camera on shutter speed priority to let the camera adjust the aperture. I found that on the very slow shutter speeds there was 'whiteout' on the highlights as the aperture was on it's minimum already and even with a tripod there was sensitivity to camera movement. I am going to purchase a remote to avoid touching the camera in these situations. On the fastest shutter speeds there wasn't enough light so I have brightened up the images using the options in the software (I'm just checking them with the windows media program)

 1/4000sec

 At high shutter speed the water looks frozen and gives a glassy hard image.

 1/1000sec

  1/500sec

 1/160sec

 At shutter speeds of 1/50 to 1/160 sec the image looks natural as the human eye would see it.

 1/80 sec

1/50 sec

 1/25sec

 As the shutter speeds get slower the water takes on a smoothed continuous look

 1/10 sec

  1/2 sec

I prefer the smoother images which to me have a less glassy jagged look and feel a more artistic impression of flow almost like a watercolour painting with a really 'wet brush'.

For the last 3 weeks I have been completing the exercises which I will be uploading to my blog over the next few days, I have been reading and mulling over the assignment 1 brief and started collecting photos for 'Contrasts'. My eagerly awaited order of the books on the reading list has arrived finally and so far I've looked at 'The photographer's eye' by Michael Freeman and 'Light Science and magic' by Hunter Biver Fuqua. All the books look fascinating and will be my summer holiday reading. I am so sick of the rain as it's held me up on getting out with my camera and it always seems to be when I have my free time! Good old blighty.