Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Photography Challenge 3-Shutter Speed

For years I have been complaining how my camera does not take action pictures well. All of my husband's graduation pictures have blurry morphed faces. I have deleted countless action pictures because they are blurry and unfocused. That is the main reason I wanted an SLR camera--since my old Olympus (regular) digital took wonderful pictures-as long as everything was still. However, using my Nikon on "Auto" has not yielded the expected results. I started the challenge taking pictures of the snow-since here in PA we were experiencing Snowmageddon 2010. They are not the best pictures-I tried various versions (night and day) to get pictures with slow and fast shutter speeds-I got some good experience but the pictures are not great-it was hard to find something dark to contrast the white flakes in a world completely covered in snow. Here are the best of them, taken at the onset of the snow-it was "raining" snow:


Shutter 1/6 ISO 1600

Shutter 1/25 ISO 1600

Shutter1/60 ISO 1600

The next day we were completely snowed under by 2 feet of the pretty white stuff-so I took pictures from the window of the birds at the feeder. I got some better pictures that day-but it completely emphasized how much I miss having a Zoom Lens. (My husband also heard me whine (hint hint dear hubby) for a long time because he couldn't go anywhere-snowed in).

Shutter 1/100 ISO 400

Shutter 1/800 ISO 400

Shutter 1/1250 ISO 200

Shutter 1/800 ISO 400

See Honey, that last pic would have been fabulous if I had a Zoom!

I still wanted a better handle on this shutter speed so I dug a path to may car, uncovered it and found my box of wind-ups I use during speech therapy with my students for motivation. I experimented with a few at different speeds-a bunny that does a complete flip and a butterfly that goes forward fast, flapping her wings.

Shutter 1/1.3 ISO 400

Shutter 1/800, ISO 800


Shutter 1/1.3 ISO 400


Shutter 1/500 ISO 400


Shutter 1/320 ISO 400


Shutter 1/800 ISO 800


The bunny ended up being my favorite.


Want to join the photography fun? Go here.

6 comments:

  1. Great examples I love the snow ones, and the bunny (is that a bunny?) jumping.

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  2. I love the first picture of the snow falling! I also like how you captured the wind-up toys in action. Fun!

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  3. The snow photos are so striking. Love how you captured the bunny in mid jump.

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  4. That's awesome! Such a fun experiment! I need to do more of that too... when I find the time. Thanks for visiting my blog! =)

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