Shutter Speed Settings

I am not too excited about the photos I took for this assignment, especially after seeing some other dynamic posts from you, my classmates! But anyhow, here they are.

This first photo of one of my cats was taken with an extremely slow shutter speed - 4 seconds.  I had to use a mini- tripod at that speed.  I am using this picture here because she moved her head as I was shooting, and at that speed her movement shows as a blur mostly evident in the upper left hand corner. 

f3.5  1/125

I was outside on a sunny day for the next set. I wanted to catch some water movement, and since I don't live near any creeks or anything, I used my garden hose. This first shot was taken at the fastest shutter speed I could achieve with my camera under those conditions, and the aperture is large as a result. The water droplets are apparent, but the coiled hose in the background is barely discernible.

f3.5  1/100

This shot has a slightly slower shutter speed. The change is so incremental that I was able to leave the aperture setting where it was. The second picture is a little bit lighter than the first because the slower shutter speed allowed slightly more light to reach the sensor.

f3.5  1/80

Shutter speed even slower here.  Now the water droplets are noticeably less distinct - some of the water appears as streaks of light. There is more blur at the lightest point. I still have the aperture at 3.5. The hose in the background is a bit more apparent.

f3.5  1/50

This is the slowest shutter speed I could get with the aperture kept at the same setting. The water droplets are blurred and the photo looks very light because this longer exposure is letting more light reach the sensor. There is a sense of movement of the water here, and in the preceding photo.

f5  1/30

 

Finally, here is the same shot with the aperture smaller and the exposure longer. Because of the smaller aperture opening, more of the photo is in focus and you can see the hose in the background now. The shutter speed is slower than in the other pictures, but it is still fast enough to freeze the motion of the drops of water. In this photo you can tell that I had the hose shooting upwards, not spraying down from above.

f8  1/25

Here is a close-up of a cat grooming itself. Because of the high shutter speed relative to the speed of the cat's tongue, the action is frozen and there is no sense of movement.

f4.5  1/30

f7.1  1/10

These last two photos show the different effects you can get from the same shot. In the first one the action is frozen and in the second, the shutter speed has been reduced to one third of what it was, and the person on the swing conveys movement. There is no right or wrong when you are fooling around with shutter speed - it just depends on what effect you are trying to achieve.