I’m on day 13 of a 16 day, 3 event road trip. I began in Moab with DLWS then headed straight to Dallas to give an evening seminar and am now enjoying the amazing bird photography in So Texas with a great group of eager photographers so, I am way behind on my blogs. So, Tech Tuesday is a day late this week. Thanks for bearing with me.
Every exposure has a variety of combinations of aperture and shutter speed to choose from. Which one do you select? Are you looking to stop the action…
Or, do you want to emphasize the feeling of motion…
In both of the above images, the light was the same, the ISO was the same (200), it’s the aperature shutter speed combination that makes the difference. The top image was made with an aperture of f4 and a shutter speed of 1/250. With the relatively fast shutter speed I was able to pretty much stop the action showing every detail. The second image was made by changing the aperture to f22 which resulted in a shutter speed of 1/8 of a second giving me a blur motion effect. When I am trying to convey motion, I like shooting at a slower shutter speed. Given the light and the ISO I selected, I had a choice of several aperture shutter speed combinations to choose from. f4 @ 1/250, f5.6 @ 1/125, f8 @ 1/60, f11 @ 1/30, f16 @ 1/15 or f22 @ 1/8. Each of the combinations give me the exact same exposure value but the choice of aperture shutter speed combinations give me an entirely different effect. So, the next time you are faced with an opportunity to shoot action, think about what you want the end result to look like and choose your aperture shutter speed combination accordingly.
Tech Facts: Images captured with Nikon D3, AF-S 600mm VR, ISO 200, top image f4 @ 1/250, bottom image f22 @ 1/8 with minus 1/2 exposure compensation dialed in.
