Day Four … S is for Shutter Priority

The S mode (Shutter Priority, TX on Canon cameras). Its very simple to use you set the shutter speed and ISO and the camera chooses the best aperture for you.

There is a lot of advice out on the net and in how to books about the importance of keeping shutter speeds fast enough to avoid camera shake. So setting the shutter speed sounds like a good option. It is also helpful if you need to you can “freeze” action by using and ultra fast shutter speed (like 1/2000th of a second), faster infact than a blink of an eye. While I did use this mode on older film cameras, I have seldom used this setting on any of my digital cameras (I’ll explain later below in this post). Like most cameras  my new Olympus OMD E M10iii does have an S mode and I was trying to think where I might use it and I settled on birds in flight (be warned that is a challenging subject to try yourself especially starting out, kids on a bike would be a better choice)

That was a bit easier said than done, It was a cold dull overcast morning that Melbourne gets a bad reputation for but aren’t really all that common. So there where not many birds out and about. I figured ducks would still be out, supposed this is the weather they like, so it was down to the lake.

Despite starting to drizzle the duck did perform for me. He was sitting on the wooden rail on a small pier as I approached and a photo with the shutter speed set to a 50th of a second was almost ok (the image has a slight blur but the duck is recognizable despite the low light and slow speed). However as he took off, the next photo, also at 1/50th second is just a blur of feathers. He circled around which gave me time to change the shutter speed and catch him flying in and about to land at 1/2000th. of a second. Now most of the duck is in sharp focus (perhaps expect for him trimming his wing tip feathers). So Shutter Priority mainly helps in deciding weather you want blur or sharpness when you subject is moving. I probably won’t be using this mode to often, but it will help is some situation (if I have enough time to change the mode dial and the shutter speed before my subject has disappeared into the distance. Which it generally has.)  Thus you need to plan when using this mode before the action starts.

PhotoProject :: Seeing by Moving Sideway

This is another photo project inspired by Freeman Patterson’s book Photography and the Art of Seeing. This time I’m doing my thinking sideways deliberately breaking a rule.

 

Rule : For slow shitter speeds (less than 1/60 sec) secure your camera on a tripod.

Sideways: Why not see what happens if I move the camera!

I have had a homemade string monopod for sometime now. Its really easy to operate, I just  screw in the connector to the tripod socket, let the cord dangle to the ground, then step on it and pull the camera up a little till the chord is tight.  On my recent trip to Canada although i had taken a travel tripod I mainly used this simple homemade device to stabiles my photos, because it is fast to set up and simply rolls up so it is always in my camera bag. It is also teriffic for macro work in the field where you can arc into the best position to focus and keep the camera stable.

My idea was the photograph some flowers from above with the camera swinging back and forth. Really easy to do I set the camera to a very slow shutter (1/8 sec) low ISO (100 ASA) and higher Fstop because it was daytime. Then I set the camera time for a delay, and my canon has the ability to then take a number of photos about 2 seconds apart. I stood on my front deck and dangled my camera over the flowers below and like a apprentice puppeteer, tried to swing the camera back and forth then let it spiral down. Ten shots is not many but that's all I took. AND I was amazed with what I had shot. There are only 2 photos here (and certainly I enhanced them in Nik’s software) but more than half the photos were pretty decent.

 

As Freeman warns this approach may be a bit formulaic and should be used with constraint BUT moving the camera can work really well.

Russian Roulette with the forest

One of a few problems I soon discovered trying to get decent photos from the train, is to do with a clear view. The Canadian train travels up into the Rockies along deep river ravines and there are lots or trees, which get taller and taller. The train only travels up the steep railway at 45 mph, which is slower than normal car travel. However it is still fast enough they trees beside the tracks just flash past.

So I quickly found there was an anticipation game, when to snap the photo. Its harder than you might think, and I have quiet a set of blurred trees. But once in a while the mountain will be nicely framed between the tree.

 

(Hint: I used a higher ISO than usual so that the shutter speed was faster and more likely to freeze reasonably close trees)