Fast & slow shutter speeds
Faster speeds record motion and movement by capturing a fleeting slice of the action. Fast shutter technique forms the key to the best wildlife and sports photography, but knowing where to position yourself to see the action is important too. As a general guide, 1/250th of a second is necessary for most non-running human movement; for running and jumping action, 1/500th of a second is necessary; and for very fast action, such as motor sports, horse racing, cricket and football, 1/1000th of a second and over is needed.
With fast shutter speeds, light hits the sensor only for a very short time, so light of a higher intensity must be used to compensate. To increase light intensity, larger aperture values like f2.8 or f4 should be selected. If little natural light at the scene prevents the selection of a fast shutter speed, increasing the ISO value from 200 to 800 will solve the problem
Movement within photographic images can be a very expressive and atmospheric tool for creating a sensation of activity and action, but you do need to anchor your camera on a tripod. Experiment with shutter speed settings from 1/2 to 1/8th of a second and if this doesn’t create enough blur, then move the camera itself during exposure
Moving subjects should be photographed from sideon, so any movement trail is captured within the frame. Better digital cameras enable you to keep the shutter held open on the B setting for indefinite periods of time. With this technique, any moving bright lights record as streaks, and static objects record as they appear. Ultra-long exposure tricks are often used by architectural photographers to blur-out moving people, leaving the static and important architecture to dominate the composition.
This kind of exposure trick is made using special lightreducing filters called neutral density filters. Without causing colour imbalance, ND filters reduce the light levels drastically, enabling the photographer to pick a shutter speed of several seconds without running the risk of overexposing the image. Blurring effects are easily mimicked in image-editing applications using the Gaussian Blur filter.
