Shutters and movement

Here are my shots for the exercise looking at how different shutter speeds give a sense of movement. I didn’t quite do it according to the book, far too small a range in f stops (F4 to f22) on the 24-105 lens to cope with the shutter speed range of 30sec to 1/8000sec of the 5D MkII but a range from 1/13 to 1/400 nicely illustrates thing along with an illustration of smaller f number = smaller depth of field. Now for the photos, not the most exciting of compositions I know but the scientist in me wanted to illustrate the point of the exercise as much as possible. I set this up to give me several different movements. First is the nearest duck which was having a good old scratch, next the almost chaotic movement of the water over the rocks to the right of the ducks and finally the vertical movement of the background waterfall. For all the shots focus was on the closest duck


f22 1/13

In this slow shutter speed shot the water and the duck show movement blur looking effective for the water (particularly the waterfall which the narrow aperture leaves in focus).

f20 1/25

My favorite, the slightly subtler blurring of the water allows the green of the rocks to show through and there is enough blurring of the ducks head to suggest movement without looking to out of focus.

Moving through the series all give slightly different effects of motion blur which would vertainly have use in different aspects of photography. By 1/250sec motion in the scene is effectively frozen though depth of field effects are starting to put the background out of focus.