This past Tuesday, the 9th, I taught a photography class. We learned about the Rule of Thirds, shutter speeds, aperture and camera settings. It’s easy to shoot in automatic mode and have your camera choose the settings automatically, but sometimes you might want to do things your way. I shot this basketball photo seen here many years ago for the Southern Utah University JOURNAL newspaper. I can’t remember what shutter speed I used, but it was fast.
Most DSLR cameras will have a dial that lets you choose which mode you would like to shoot in. There is the Auto mode, which is recommended when you would like the camera to make the proper adjustments, so you can basically just point and shoot. You can keep the camera in Auto mode without the flash going off by turning the dial to the zigzag arrow. Then you have modes that automatically select the best settings for the selected scene, such as portrait mode, landscape mode, close-up mode, sports mode and the night portrait mode.
Now if you choose P you will be in Programmed Auto mode which is like Full Auto mode except that now you can choose the specific area of focus. Then there is S, A and M mode. For today I will focus on the shutter priority mode. If you’re shooting sports or something fast moving like a running dog, horse or even chasing your kids around outside, the shutter priority mode would be ideal to freeze the action. With a higher shutter speed you’ll capture less movement and lowering the shutter speed will leave some blurring depending on how fast the subject is moving and which shutter speed you choose. Turn the dial to S and choose your desired speed by turning the main command dial. To show you an example of how you can freeze the action in shutter priority mode I took three pictures of cars driving and snapped the pictures at three different shutter speeds.
This car was taken 1/60sec. This shows a sense of speed and you know that car is moving.
This silver car was taken at 1/500sec. This isn’t as blurred as the above photo, but you still know the car is moving. You can better identify the vehicle and you still have a sense of motion.
Finally, this Jeep was taken at 1/4000sec, which is the fastest shutter speed my Nikon D90 will shoot at. You can see that in this picture time is really frozen. It almost looks like the Jeep is just parked in the street. You might not want to shoot this fast if you want to show movement.
