The choice of shutter speed has a profound effect on the way moving subjects are recorded. For average everyday shooting with standard zooms, a speed over 1/20 to 1/125 second will prevent motion blur (camera shake). However, as the shutter speed goes past 1/500 second, you can then start to take advantage of the faster shutter speed’s ability to freeze action. For high-speed photography (especially sports photography), it is really necessary to get good motion blur-free shots. But making these speeds possible also requires either wide apertures, bright lighting conditions or an adjustment to the camera’s ISO speed — or a combination of all three.
Sometime the task of catching the most expressive instant, which can last for only hundredths of a second, becomes very difficult. In such cases, most photographers use the sequence mode, so that the camera fires several shots as it is panned. Cameras with a sequence mode let you fire a sequence and then throw out all of the non-sharp or useless images.
If you need to shoot a photo of a girl’s hair flying about or freeze the splash of a pouring drink, strobe is the way to do it. Most photographers use electronic flash as the lighting source in studios to freeze motion. Since electronic flash (strobe) stays lit between 1/800th and 1/2000th of a second, and because you will usually be shooting at f-stops above f-8, everything in the image will be razor sharp.
Further Resources
Further articles and related resources:
- Make Magazine:High Speed Photography Kit
- DIY – High Speed Photography at Home
- High Speed Photography Flickr Pool
- Liquid Art: Droplet Photography
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