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Slow Shutter Speed Photography: Five Easy Experiments.

By Andrew Goodall

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 27Aug2008 Word count: 751 Viewed: 289 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Digital SLR cameras offer all the same manual settings that photographers have been using for years. The trouble is, many new photographers don't know how to use them.

If you have grown up with a 'point and shoot' camera and have just taken the plunge with a new digital SLR, don't just leave it on auto. If you do that, all you have is a much more expensive point and shoot camera. The key to improving your photography is to learn to use your manual settings.

One of these settings is Shutter Speed. It is fun to experiment with and easy to see the results in your photos. Although we usually try to freeze our subject with the fastest shutter speed possible, you can get some great effects by using a slower shutter speed to capture movement effects.

To try this out, you can set your camera to Shutter Priority, in which case you can set the shutter speed and the camera will take care of the aperture for you. Or, you can go to fully manual and adjust both settings yourself. Just remember to keep your exposure balanced by compensating each movement in the shutter speed setting with a corresponding movement of the aperture setting.

Remember to always use a tripod for slow shutter speed photos.

Here are five ideas for great capturing great motion effects, simply by slowing down your shutter speed to capture the movement of the subject. If you haven't tried this before, you will have some fun and be thrilled with the results.

Slow Shutter Speed Subject #1. Waterfalls. This is the obvious first choice. You have certainly seen the silky effects of flowing water in photos, but perhaps you have wondered how it is done. Just set your camera to a very slow speed; about one second or a half-second, and see the results. This effect does not look good for every waterfall, but you can always try a few shutter speeds and see which one works best for that particular subject.

Slow Shutter Speed Subject #2. Cars at night. When doing night photography, you usually need fairly slow shutter speeds anyway. If you try shutter speeds of one second, two seconds, ten seconds, and even longer, you will see some amazing results. The lights of the vehicles will create streams of bright colour, stretching away into the distance. The more traffic you see, the more remarkable the effect can become.

Slow Shutter Speed Subject #3. Lightning. People often ask me how I take my lightning photos. Some people imagine it takes superhuman reflexes to snap the picture at just the right moment. In fact, my approach is almost the opposite.

First, I wait for a storm (at night) with lots of lightning; in particular, fork lightning that will appear well defined in a photo. I set the shutter to the 'B' setting, which lets me open the shutter for any length of time I choose. Then I wait for the lightning to flash. I can decide to close the shutter after one flash, or wait for several flashes, which will all appear in the one image.

Slow Shutter Speed Subject #4. Waves. The movement effect of water in a waterfall can also be applied at the beach, although you don't see it so often in photography. When you visit the beach, experiment with different shutter speeds. Sometimes you will find that soft movement effects are just as satisfying as freezing everything with a fast shutter speed.

The misty appearance of fast moving water captured with slow shutter speeds can be most effective where waves are crashing over, or swirling around rocks.

Slow Shutter Speed Subject #5. Crowds Of People. A crowd of people moving in different directions can create a fascinating motion effect in a photo. You don't need extremely slow shutter speeds to capture some nice results. Photos taken around 1/4sec will show substantial blurring, but of course you can exaggerate the effect by going even slower.

For a really impressive image, have a friend stand very still, while everyone around them is moving. Your subject will appear frozen in a sea of moving humanity. Very striking!

So there you have some experiments to go out and try yourself. If you haven't done it before, you are bound to have fun and be excited by the results. And of course it will force you to get to know your camera a little better, which is guaranteed to make you a better photographer.

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