PHOTOGRAPHY BASICS
Panning photography for beginners
Discover how to use panning for better action photos with these top tips.
SHUTTER SPEED
SHUTTER SPEED
Changing your camera's shutter speed is one way to adjust the overall exposure of an image. But it also has creative uses, allowing you to control the amount of blur (or lack of it) in your images.
Here are five tips to help you get to grips with shutter speed and take more control over your action photography, whether you're shooting a school sports day with an EOS M mirrorless camera or motorsports with an EOS DSLR.
The majority of EOS cameras have a 'Sports' Special Scene Mode that will automatically set up the camera's exposure and focusing settings for shooting moving subjects. This will give you great results, but you can take more control when you want to get creative, produce a particular effect or adjust for the specific circumstances, such as when you're shooting a fast-moving subject handheld from a distance.
To take direct control of the shutter speed, set your camera to Shutter Priority (or Tv, which stands for Time Value). You can then set the shutter speed by rotating the camera's main dial, or by using the touchscreen that's available on many EOS cameras, including the Canon EOS M6 Mark II and Canon EOS 90D. Your camera will automatically adjust the aperture to produce a standard exposure. The top shutter speed on an EOS camera is either 1/4000 sec or 1/8000 sec, and the longest automatically-set shutter speed is 30 seconds.
There are two things to think about when you're choosing the shutter speed: whether it is fast enough to avoid blur due to camera movement when you're shooting handheld – also known as 'camera shake' – and how quickly the subject is moving.
The shutter speed you need to avoid camera shake depends on a number of things, including whether you are using a lens with a built-in IS (Image Stabilizer) and how windy it is. But the focal length of the lens is the most important factor. The more you zoom in, the more noticeable any shake becomes.
A general rule to eliminate this problem is to try to use a shutter speed that's equivalent to the effective focal length or faster. So with a 50mm lens setting, use 1/50 sec or faster, and with a 200mm lens use 1/200 sec or faster. Then you need to factor in the speed of the subject – read on!
The shutter speed required to freeze a moving subject depends on the distance it is from the camera, the direction it's moving and its speed, but you'll probably need a shutter speed faster than you might think. A shutter speed of 1/250 sec will freeze a slow-moving subject, such as a person walking, while shutter speeds in the region of 1/500 to 1/1000 sec may be needed to freeze a person running. You'll have to go as high as 1/1000 or even 1/4000 sec for sharp shots of faster subjects such as flying birds and speeding cars.
Compare these shots of a moving motorbike. You can see that the bike and rider are blurred at a shutter speed of 1/200 sec, giving a great general impression of motion but not capturing detail, while all the details are sharp and the action is frozen at 1/1000 sec.
Be prepared to increase the ISO setting so that you can use faster shutter speeds, especially when you're photographing sports and wildlife.
The downside of freezing the action can be that it doesn't look like action any more. Pictures of moving subjects often look more dynamic if the subject is sharp but the background is blurred. To achieve this effect, make sure the shutter speed is slow enough to give you some blur, then move the camera with the subject, at the same speed as it's moving. This is called panning.
The shutter speed you need to use will depend on how fast the subject is moving and how much blur you want. To improve your chances of getting the subject sharp, set the AF mode to AI Servo or Servo, as this will allow the camera to constantly adjust to keep the moving subject in focus. A lens with a built-in optical Image Stabilizer will compensate for any vertical 'shake' as you pan the camera horizontally and vice versa. If your lens has an IS mode switch, set this to position 2 for panning shots – in this setting, it will stabilise vertical motion but allow blur caused by horizontal motion.
You can use a relatively long exposure – longer than a second, say – to intentionally blur a picture. To prevent this overexposing the shot, though, you’ll need to use a narrower aperture setting (higher f-number, such as f/16 or f/22), a lower ISO setting, or an ND filter to limit the amount of light entering the camera. Now you can either move the camera during the exposure (which will blur the whole photo) or use a tripod to keep the camera stationary so that only the moving parts of a scene are blurred. Try the latter technique to soften waves and flowing water in a landscape, or to blur moving vehicles and crowds of people in a city scene.
For exposures longer than 30 seconds, use Bulb mode. Some Canon cameras have a 'B' setting on their mode dial, while others need to be set to 'M' (Manual) before you can scroll through the shutter speeds until 'BULB' is displayed. A remote timer or wired remote can be useful, to eliminate the risk of jarring caused by pressing the shutter button. You could also consider using the Canon Camera Connect App to control your camera remotely from your smartphone.
Written by Marcus Hawkins
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Back to all Tips & TechniquesPHOTOGRAPHY BASICS
Discover how to use panning for better action photos with these top tips.
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