Freezing time

This post has been prompted by Exercise 3.1

Getting to grips with shutter speed.

My technical skills let me down a bit but I’m learning.  Looking on line I think I’ve got a good idea about what has been going wrong with my photographs even if the pictures I take are only improving slowly.

Choosing a subject.

Rain drops

During a very heavy downpour a month back I tried to capture the rain.  This wasn’t very successful, but I wasn’t sure why.  I had hoped that I would get clear, individual drops but the best that I got was a streaky blur.

I also found that I was having trouble with exposure, with only the clothes pegs barely visible in the image below.

Looking back on it now I can see that the shutter speed was too slow to capture the individual drops in 1_1 and the ISO and shutter speed incompatible in 1_2.

Bee

On my second attempt at mastering shutter speed I tried to capture a bee in mid-flight. Getting the ISO and shutter speed right so that visible blur was avoided proved tricky.

The photos were either very over or under exposed.  The photograph on the right was nearer the mark with a faster shutter speed and thus a clearer image of the bee. If the ISO had been higher then the exposure would have been better.

This photograph was more successful in as much as the exposure was correct and it was in focus. The bee as the subject of the photo is too small and the shutter speed not fast enough to properly capture the beating wings. I realised from doing this that it is really hard to get a good photograph when you have no control whatsoever over your subject.

Tomato drop

I then though of capturing the moment that a tomato fell from its bush.  As I didn’t have time to wait until one dropped naturally, I had to enlist the help of my partner to drop one into shot. As with all the previous attempts I set my camera to record bursts of images. I got my trusty helper to hold the tomato in what I hoped would be the right position and using a tripod to keep the camera steady, I set the focus for this point.

The shutter speed was too slow in the first photograph and the tomato was blurred. In the second photograph the faster shutter speed created a better image. With the ISO the same the increased shutter speed could have made the image too dark but the change in f stop helped to keep the exposure to acceptable levels.

My favourite tomato shot is the one below.

Trying to bet more control over my subject I again got my long-suffering husband to help.  He’s a big tennis fan, both watching and playing, so it was natural for him to pick up a bat and ball.  He was really not keen on the first attempt with the orange foam ball as he hadn’t ‘prepared’ himself but from my point of view these shots worked.  The background could have been a bit brighter, but on the whole the shutter speed adequately ‘froze’ the moment.

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Once in his ‘proper’ gear I took more photographs and it showed a moment of serendipity.  After having tried and failed to capture an insect in flight, a cabbage white obligingly flew into shot. The shots could have been a bit brighter and also the shutter speed a tad faster to obtain really sharp images.

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The next try wasn’t planned at all.  Out in my garden I noticed a butterfly which had just got caught in a spider’s web. Rather macabrely, I set up my camera to take photos of it. As I deliberated on whether or not I should try and free it from its prison, a large spider shot down from its hidey-hole in the clock and sealed its fate.  I used a fast shutter speed to capture its final moments.  The background in particular looked very dark at times due to the chosen ISO and although this meant it probably wasn’t a correct exposure, I did like the effect that it produced.