Adjustment skills of camera shutter speed

Lead: The basic function of shutter is to control the exposure value of photos by combining the aperture, but shutter can also be used as a special creative tool. Let's talk about the adjustment skills of camera shutter speed in detail. Let's have a look!

Ensure correct exposure

For shooting a specific scene, if we change the value of one parameter, we must adjust the value of at least one other parameter to ensure the correct exposure. For the simplest example, if you want to lower the shutter speed, you must lower the aperture or lower the sensitivity.

How to adjust the shutter speed

Shutter priority mode

Shutter priority mode is usually represented by the letter S or Tv on the camera mode dial or menu. In this mode, the shutter speed of the camera is controlled by us, and the aperture size is judged by the camera according to the exposure value. Generally speaking, there is a dial wheel on the camera to control the shutter speed, but for the sake of safety, it is best to read the instructions first.

Use a high-speed shutter

When using high-speed shutter, if the ambient light is insufficient or the maximum aperture of the lens is too small to meet the needs of correct exposure, the viewfinder will appear corresponding warning information. In this case, if we can't change the lighting conditions at the scene, we can only make the warning disappear by improving the sensitivity setting of the camera.

Use a low-speed shutter

When the ambient light is too strong, we will see a warning message similar to the above. Lowering the sensitivity setting can solve this problem. But if the warning still doesn't disappear after we reduce the sensitivity to the lowest value, we can only reduce the amount of light entering the lens through neutral gray filter.

1/250 seconds or faster shutter solidification instantaneous dynamic.

High-speed shutter can solidify the details and charm that the naked eye often can't grasp in dynamic scenes.

Lock the focus of this eagle, and follow the shooting with the shutter of11000 seconds to capture its extremely dynamic moment.

The reason for using a high-speed shutter is simple. The faster the motion speed of the main body of the picture, the higher the shutter speed required to solidify its dynamics. The shutter speed of 1/250 seconds or more can capture the dynamics of most slow moving objects, while the shutter speed of11000 seconds can capture faster moving objects such as cars, while the shutter speed of 1/8000 seconds will not even let go of bullets. But if you want to successfully capture an object moving so fast, you can't just rely on a fast enough shutter.

First, you must make sure that the scene is in the picture and in focus. The simplest method is to track the movement of an object with a lens and keep the focus on the moving object. Setting the camera autofocus mode to artificial intelligence servo focusing or continuous focusing can be helpful to some extent, but to improve the shooting success rate, it is still necessary to rely on the usual shooting practice and hand accumulation of high-speed moving objects. In addition, the lighting conditions during shooting are also very important.

The next thing to pay attention to is the timing of shooting. Photography is a static art. If the shooting time is not well grasped, even an extremely fast object may look like it is still in a two-dimensional world. Taking sports photography as an example, we can consider using dust, water and other elements to enhance the sense of strength of characters, or using athletes' expressions to set off dynamic pictures.

Advanced technology? Use flash

Flash is a good helper to lock high-speed moments. The flash duration of the flash is mostly as high as11000 seconds or faster, and the action of the main body of the picture can be firmly grasped without the cooperation of a large aperture lens. Especially in complete darkness, in a flash? Improve? Your shutter speed. You can set the camera to door B in the darkroom and turn on the flash when you want to shoot. At this time, the camera will record the flash scene.

This method is applied in many fields. Many classic ultra-high-speed photography works, such as bullets penetrating objects and splashing water droplets, are shot in this way. Some of these photos need to use extremely complicated equipment to determine the correct exposure time of the flash, but with enough patience, after repeated attempts, you can capture the beauty of a simple object like a water drop with the most common camera and flash.

Common mistakes

Lack of exercise

The high-speed shutter can completely freeze the motion, so the scene in the picture sometimes seems to be completely still. We can choose diagonal composition or diagonal composition to enhance the motion of the picture, but the best way is to use the shaking method introduced on the next page.

Blurred picture

If the blur of the picture does not meet our expectations, it is usually either out of focus or because the shutter speed is too slow. If it is the former, the reason may be that the main body of the picture deviates from the focus we choose. If it is the latter, you need to choose a faster shutter speed.

Avoid noise caused by high sensitivity.

In order to obtain the high-speed shutter required by solidification dynamics, we usually need to improve the sensitivity setting of the camera. Fortunately, most of today's digital SLR can still provide good image quality at ISO 1600 or even higher sensitivity settings. But if the photos we take are unfortunately underexposed, noise will still become a big problem when we try to improve the brightness of the picture through post-processing software. Even photos taken at low sensitivity settings are no exception.

In order to avoid the noise problem in post-processing, the accuracy of exposure must be ensured in the early shooting. Especially when shooting in an environment with strong background light, the main body of the picture is easily underexposed because of the misjudgment of the camera metering system.

When waiting for the breaking waves to hit the rock to reach the highest point, use the high-speed shutter of11000 seconds to show the power of the storm at sea.

1/250 seconds-115 seconds highlights the sense of speed of the object.

Choose a relatively slow shutter speed and shoot a moving scene by panning. The blurred background can set off the sense of movement of the picture.

You don't have to use a high-speed shutter to shoot high-speed moving scenes. We can also use a relatively slow shutter to contrast motion through blur. There are two methods: one is to keep the camera still when shooting, and get a picture with clear background and blurred moving objects; In the process of shooting, the camera moves with the moving object to obtain a clear image of the moving object with blurred background. The latter method, called panning, keeps the camera still. We will discuss a lot later. Now I mainly talk about how to get the perfect translation effect.

Use the swing technique

When the motion direction of the main body of the picture is parallel to the camera, it is relatively simple to shoot by shaking. Select the subject, use the viewfinder to follow the subject to keep its position stable, press the shutter during the tracking movement and continue to keep the camera moving.

In order to get the perfect shaking shooting effect, the key is to keep the action smooth and stable, and follow the shooting action until the shooting is over. When you press the shutter, the viewfinder is dark and you can't observe the subject. Don't slow down the camera's shaking speed at this time, and don't doubt your judgment just now.

Increase difficulty

When the subject of the picture is facing a certain angle, facing away from the photographer, or moving along a non-linear trajectory, it is more difficult to shake the camera. It is basically impossible to shoot such moving objects, such as cars moving irregularly on corners, without long-term practice. I hope to get photos with blurred background and clear subject.

There are also some tips for panning. Choose a point on the moving object that you want to keep clear, focus only on this point in the viewfinder and keep its position unchanged. Take shooting racing cars as an example, we usually focus on the numbers or decorations on the hood. It sounds easy, but our attention to the observation point in actual shooting is easily disturbed by the overall motion of the scene.

Learn from me: basic swing skills

How to shoot a successful panning work when the moving object moves to the lens?

1 Set autofocus mode

To track the object moving towards the camera, the camera autofocus mode must be set to artificial intelligence servo focus or continuous focus mode to ensure that the camera can always lock the focus on the subject. After setting the autofocus mode, set the focus according to the part of the picture that we want to keep clear.

2 Set the shutter speed

Switch the camera to shutter priority mode and choose the appropriate shutter speed according to the motion characteristics of the subject. The values provided in the above table can be used for reference, but the actual shooting should be weighed and adjusted according to the picture effect and the speed of moving objects.

3 Smooth motion

Determine the position of the moving object in the picture as soon as possible, and then choose the appropriate focus according to the composition. Keep moving at the same speed as the moving object through the viewfinder, and press the shutter when the appropriate background appears. To ensure the success rate, you can set the camera to continuous shooting mode.

Common mistakes

Excessive exercise

If all the pictures in your photo are equally blurred, it is either because you are moving too fast or because the shutter speed you choose is too slow. At this time, it is necessary to set a higher shutter speed and slow down the shaking speed to ensure the clarity of the subject.

Insufficient exercise

If the background is not blurred enough and the picture is not dynamic enough, it is because the shutter speed used is not slow enough. If shooting conditions permit, you can reduce the shutter speed by one or two steps while keeping the subject clear and blur the background.

Professional skills in using flash

When shooting bicycles, racing cars and other sports, using flash is a good way to ensure the clarity of moving objects, but only if you keep a very close distance from them. If you are only in the audience, turning on the flash has no effect on the shooting results at all.

115s-1 sec, let fuzzy work for me.

Reducing the shutter speed while keeping the camera stable can record the movement of things in the picture in an interesting way. This approach can easily make our works look professional.

When the shutter speed is set to 1/4 seconds, pedestrians near the camera have stronger blur effect than those in the middle and long range.

When the camera shutter continues to drop below115 seconds, we can explore the new blur effect brought by the scene movement. The common water blur effect in professional photography works is mostly shot with a similar low-speed shutter. But whether it is running water or waterfall, the most important thing is to have a stable tripod.

In order to get the desired effect, we need to keep the camera completely stable during the whole shooting process. Using the wide-angle end of the standard zoom lens of digital camera and the anti-shake system, we can basically shoot by hand under the shutter of 1/8 or115 seconds. But when the shutter speed is slow, we will use a tripod. Remember to turn off the anti-shake function of the camera or lens when using the tripod.

Pay special attention to

The biggest difficulty in using slow gate shooting is to predict the final effect of moving objects in the scene, which involves many factors. Only by practicing more and comparing the picture in your mind with the final result can you gradually master the shutter speed you want to use.

First of all, we need to judge whether the movement of the scene is regular along a fixed trajectory like running water or irregular voluntary movement like leaves. Objects that move regularly along fixed rules will appear in the form of lines in the picture, while objects that move randomly will appear as a bunch of messy fuzzy pixels in the picture.

Slow down the shutter speed

The next thing we need to determine is the shutter speed, which depends on the motion of the scene, the distance from the camera and the blur effect we need. For example, the shutter speed required to achieve the same blur effect is definitely different between the stagnant water in the foreground and the swaying leaves in the background.

If you want to photograph the contrast between reality and reality, you need to consider more. For example, how to make the water flow virtual and make the water flow relatively virtual. At this time, the shutter speed should not be too slow, because the leaves can't be completely still.

When shooting pedestrians, the blur effect is usually unpredictable because people walk at different speeds.

Shoot in the car

Have you ever wondered how a photographer can take a clear picture of a car with a blurred background like the one above? There are two tips. One is to use a low-speed shutter, and the other is to find a fixed point for the camera on the vehicle. People who use equipment to carry loads had better not try this technology, because the camera vibrates easily at high speed.

Some photographers like to stick the camera on their chest, but in a moving car, it is best to install the camera on a tripod or a support bar, and then fix it with the car body through a suction cup, otherwise the contact between the tripod and the car will be unstable.

In order to avoid camera vibration, try to slow down when driving. If necessary, you can even let a friend push the car behind you and release the shutter remotely. In the above picture, we added characters to make the scene look more realistic.

You need to pay attention to safety when shooting. You can try shooting on the road outside the city. In a noisy city, it is best not to shoot on the road.

Common mistakes

Overexposure

When the shutter speed decreases, overexposure is easy to occur in areas with large motion range such as water surface. First set a shot according to the recommendation in this section, and then confirm whether the exposure is correct according to the histogram or highlight overflow warning during playback.

Expert skills? Use a polarizer

In the case of sufficient light, it is difficult to control the shutter speed below 1/8 seconds even with the minimum aperture and minimum sensitivity settings. Polarizer can not only eliminate the reflection in the picture, but also reduce the amount of light in contact with the photosensitive element. After installing a polarizer in front of the lens, the shutter speed can be at least doubled.

The shutter speed of 1/5 seconds is enough to form the classic blur effect of running water.

1 sec -30 sec, a little slower!

Shooting with the shutter for more than one second in low light environment will blur the scene with small motion amplitude.

When the shutter speed is extended to 30 seconds, even a small change in the motion amplitude in the scene will become blurred in the final picture. The turbulent sea water and changeable situation will show a meaningful fuzzy effect under the rendering of long-term exposure. This shutter speed is also very suitable for recording all kinds of strange colors at night in the city.

At this shutter speed, we will still encounter all the problems that must be faced in long-term exposure, and look forward to the dynamic effect in the final result. Because we used a longer shutter time this time, the blur effect brought by the scene motion will be more obvious. Generally speaking, it is only when the sun goes down that it is possible to shoot with a shutter speed of more than one second. If you want the sky in the photo to still show enough details, you must take photos when the sun has just set or is about to rise and the sky is still shining slightly under the sunlight.

This kind of fuzzy effect with a strong sense of picture is obtained after a long exposure just after sunset.

Further reduce the speed

Neutral gray filter or polarizer can reduce the amount of light entering the lens and help us slow down the shutter speed. The brighter the light, the higher the density of the medium gray mirror, such as Lee's big plug or ND500MC in the light craft workshop.

Common mistakes? Camera jitter

Even a camera mounted on a tripod may shake, resulting in blurred images. If the shooting environment is windy, you can hang the camera under the central axis of the tripod to improve the stability of the tripod. In addition, it is necessary to check whether all three legs of the tripod are stable before shooting.

Shooting light trace

After nightfall, long exposure can turn the coming and going vehicles into a light trace.

At night, long exposure can be used to record the light traces of passing vehicles. The basic skills needed to take this kind of photo are the same as other types of long exposure photos, but whether the light can be recorded does not depend on the shutter speed we use, but on the aperture we set. If you turn off the aperture too small when shooting, they will become very inconspicuous in the picture.

There is no end to the slow shutter under 30 seconds.

Shooting with a long shutter in a dark environment will let us see different beauty in the night sky.

This slow door work consists of 18 photos in Startrails, and the exposure time of each photo is 30 seconds. It not only shows the change of the starry sky in nine minutes, but also avoids the noise of the picture.

When the shutter speed exceeds 30 seconds, even under the faint starlight, we can clearly record the details of the scene, smooth the fluctuation of the sea, and even capture the moving stars that we seldom care about.

30 seconds is the upper shutter limit that most cameras can set. If you want to get a longer exposure time, you must open the B-door mode in manual mode. When it is set to door B, we press the shutter and the camera starts to expose. As long as our fingers don't leave the shutter, the exposure process will not stop. Of course, the length of exposure time in the actual shooting process will also be restricted by some other factors.

Exposure skill

The longer the exposure time, the more heat accumulated by the photosensitive element, and the more obvious the noise generated in the shooting results. This is not a problem for digital SLR cameras that have appeared in recent years. A few minutes of exposure time will not cause obvious noise problems, especially when the noise reduction function of long exposure is turned on. However, for extreme situations such as star photography, in order to ensure the quality of shooting effect, we must pay attention to a series of problems that may occur in shooting.

Only in very weak light conditions can you get exposure time of more than 30 seconds, and night is the best practice opportunity. But in many places, due to the light pollution in cities, the sky is probably not as dark as we thought. Especially when we want to shoot the stars, the lights of street lamps, buildings and passing vehicles will cover up the faint starlight.

Living in a bustling city, we have to accept this realistic problem. On the other hand, under the illumination of city lights, clouds and fog in the sky may also present completely different natural charms. At this time, you can't shoot the orbit of the star, which is more suitable for shooting the fog-shrouded scene.

Common error hotspot pixels

There may be some single pixels whose brightness is obviously higher than the surrounding pictures in the shooting results obtained by long-term exposure, which are called hot pixels. Turning on the long exposure noise reduction function can effectively reduce the appearance of such pixels, or you can easily remove them from the picture by using the repair brush or the imitation stamp tool in Photoshop.

Problems needing attention in satellite orbit photography

speed

Because the starlight is very weak, it is necessary to use the sensitivity setting above 800 to get the ideal aperture shutter combination for recording the star track.

Exposure; expose

Set the camera to manual exposure mode. First, shoot with an f/5.6 aperture and a 30-second shutter. If the starlight is too dim in the shooting result, open the aperture to f/4; If it is too bright, reduce it to f/8.

Shooting mode

Set the driving mode to continuous shooting and the focusing mode to manual. Different from other long-time exposures, when shooting the star orbit, we must turn off the long-time exposure noise reduction function of the camera to ensure that the camera can shoot continuously and obtain a coherent star trajectory. Because the noise reduction time of the camera is the same as the shooting time, this means that if we take a picture for 30 seconds, the camera will use 30 seconds to reduce the noise.

take a picture

Put the camera on a stable tripod and use the remote control to release and lock the shutter button. The camera will shoot continuously at a shutter speed of 30 seconds at a time. Some electronic cable releasers can be equipped with automatic trigger shutters. You can set the shooting times and wait for the shooting to be completed.

The stability of tripod is very important, not only to tighten the foot tube, but also to choose a solid ground as the support point. You may have to shoot for more than an hour, and the small displacement of the tripod will also affect the effect of post-synthesis.

Finalize

When taking the last closing photo, we need to use a flashlight or flash to brighten the buildings or trees in the foreground according to our picture composition. Then cover the lens in front of the lens and take a completely black photo. The shutter and aperture settings are exactly the same as those in the previous series of photos. This photo will be used as a reference for noise reduction when we generate the final shooting result.

Learn from me: how to use door B.

1 Select the correct mode.

To use the shutter speed of more than 30 seconds, you need to use the B door. Some digital SLR cameras of Canon provide B-door stop directly on the mode dial. In addition, most cameras must be set in the manual exposure mode marked M. Set the shutter to? By adjusting the shutter dial. Light bulb? Mode, that is, as the saying goes, door B.

2 Use the remote control

If there is no remote control, we should always hold down the camera shutter during the whole shooting process, which will easily cause camera shake. Most remote controllers have the function of locking the shutter, which saves us the trouble of holding down the shutter when we are exposed for a long time.

3 exposure time

Without the help of LCD, we can only grasp the exposure time ourselves. Using the timing function provided by watches, stopwatches or mobile phones can help us accurately judge the exposure time. Many advanced electronic cable release devices have automatic timing function. You can set the shooting time and the number of photos.