Shutter Speeds

About two years ago, I decided it was time to use my SLR for all its worth. I was the mom running around with a great camera and no idea how to use it past AUTO. Use these tips to help you move away from auto and snap professional photos of your children, grandchildren, or pets.

Photographing motion certainly takes a little thought beforehand.

The rule of thumb is that for:

clear, crisp, caught-in-the-air motion, you need quick, high numbered shutter speeds.
blurred, motion-as-it’s-happening, you need slow, low numbered shutter speeds.

For this project, I wanted to have crisp images, so I selected the shutter speed 1/3200 sec. For me this is more or less trial and error, although there is an elaborate formula for finding the appropriate shutter speed.

When I’m taking sequence shots, I make sure that my camera is set to take multiple images instead of one. I also flipped my dial to TV- shutter priority mode. In this mode, I can set the shutter speed that I want to stay constant, and the camera automatically adjusts the aperture. You can see below that the shutter speeds remains at 1/320o sec, but the f-stop changes.

This especially helps in this situation, because the lighting changes as Milli runs down the ‘catwalk’.