Photography Specs: Shutter Speed

As I have previously stated, I am very much an amateur photographer. I love to take pictures, but I rarely use manual settings on my camera. And I definitely use flash, which is a no-no for professionals (flash has its own place in photography, but I was definitely overusing it). Since my husband has gifted me with various lenses and other camera equipment, I now feel obligated to learn the ropes a little better. So last week I decided to delve into one facet of photographic excellence called shutter speed.

Why shutter speed? For many reasons, but mainly because I was tired of not being able to keep up with my overactive toddler and getting blurry pictures of him ALL the time. It was getting so terribly frustrating, I wanted to cry.

Take this shot, for example. Hudson is moving all over the place and I am not able to keep up with him plus I am using flash and it makes his face look washed out:

So the first thing I did was read tutorials on shutter speed. Pioneer Woman has some excellent pointers that are very well written and easy to understand. Then I put the pedal to the metal by grabbing my camera and the kid, stepping outside into a gorgeously sunny day and shooting over 800 pictures in a couple of hours. It was fun and I learned a lot. I kept my camera in S mode which stands for shutter priority. This allowed me to only manipulate shutter speed. The camera took care of aperture for me, which made it a lot easier.

This is what I got:

I love that you can see dirt particles frozen in the air. This is much sharper and definitely captures Hudson’s movement, which is what I was going for. In this particular shot the shutter speed was set to 1/640 because it was a very sunny day. I did not use flash and I love the natural balance of light and shadows here.

On another day, in the evening, I experimented some more with shutter speed and this time I put my camera into continuous shooting mode (you press the button once and it takes multiple shots; made me feel a little bit like a paparazzi). Because I was working with a lot less light, I kept my shutter speed at 1/320. This is what I got:

I love that his movements are frozen and the pictures are very sharp. I also really love the fact that you can see the way the paper is moving in the wind and how Hudson is responding to it and interacting with it.

In the next series of shots you can see him walking and every step is frozen, making the pictures sharp:

I love that he has stepped into the light from the shadows and this balance makes things interesting. Once again, at this shutter speed I was able to capture his movements and make them sharp.

In contrast, one night as we were driving home, I decided to experiment with a slower shutter speed to capture all the lights along the way. I put my camera into S mode again, set my shutter speed to 1/30 and this is what I got: