Learn a little more, shutter speed

Have you ever shot a picture and the image been blurry? You probably had no idea why it was blurry. In the last basic education post that I am doing I am going to discuss shutter speed. Shutter speed determines ambient light, or light that is in the area already. The light can be lights that are turned on, sunlight, window light, or lots of other sources of lights. Shutter speed is how fast the shutter opens to the digital sensor. For most portrait pictures you are probably going to have your shutter below 1/200th of a second, especially if you are going to use flash. Most cameras won't allow you to shoot faster than that if you have a flash on the camera. If you are shooting kids, you will probably get blurry images if you are not shooting a fast shutter speed. Sports is the same way. If you are shooting something where you want to freeze the action, you should probably shoot shutter priority, which is S on nikon, or T on Canon. T is for time, S is for Shutter Speed. You want to set your shutter speed to a relatively fast speed 1/400th or even faster if you are shooting sports. To do that you must have plenty of light available. Daytime is the easiest time to shoot a fast shutter speed. Most low light lenses with a wide aperture are the best for shooting fast, because they bring in lots more light. Sports is tough because the real good lenses for Sports cost in the thousands. Canon and Nikon both make a 70-300 lens that will work for sports, but only in daylight because of their high aperture. Your blurry images are because of 1 of 2 things. 1) your subject was moving so fast that while the shutter was open the subject moved so the sensor is seeing the whole motion, it is also called motion blur, sometimes people use it as an effect. 2) The shutter speed was so slow that you moved the camera because you were shaking, also known as camera shake. Most people cannot shoot below 1/50th of a second hand held, if you have a tripod, you can shoot super slow. If you have any questions for me please let me know. I think this post makes sense.

More Technique

     So I actually received some emails after my post on Aperture. I guess that is something people want to read about.  So here we go. Today I am going to talk about ISO, also referred to as film speed. Which if your shooting a digital camera it obviously has no film, but it goes back to the old way that things were labeled. I know most folks my age have never even picked up a film camera. I actually own a Mamiya M645 which is probably about 10 years older than me. The film that I shoot in it was actually made in Oktober of 1980, that is the correct spelling, it was made in Europe. It is two years older than me.
     ISO on a digital camera is essentially the operators way to set how sensitive the digital sensor in the camera is. The higher the number, the more sensitive the sensor is to light. However, the higher the number, the more noise you get in the image. So the object of taking pictures is to keep your ISO as low as you can. So always start at the lowest setting and work your way up until you get what you need. Stay as low as you can to keep the quality the best it can be. Generally most cameras look the same at low ISO's because they all perform well when there is plenty of light. The more expensive cameras like the Full frame D700 and Canon 5D, will work much better in low light than the others. That is where the price difference comes in. Anyone can shoot amazing pictures with plenty of light, when it gets darker, the pro's make it happen. Most digital cameras shouldn't be shot over 800 ISO to keep your images clean of noise. The newer D7000 I know has excellent noise capabilities. A lot of the newer cameras that are coming out now have been greatly improved and should have considerable reduced noise.
     On a happier note, if I can get to 500 likes on Facebook I will be giving away a Free portrait session ($150 value).

Would you like to take better pictures?

     On most of our portrait sessions I always get asked how I get the background to be so blurry. Most people think that it is some Photoshop trick that only pros know how to do. That is simply not the case. Anyone can purchase a 50mm F1.8 lens and get the same look. Lots of times I will use it so that the viewers attention is drawn to the subject I am photographing. Sometimes I use it because it is a pretty cool background. There are three major things to remember when using a camera. I am not talking about your point and shoot, although some have the options now too. I am referring to aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. Those three terms are the major terms when talking technically about a camera. Today I will tackle Aperture. 

     Aperture is the only term of the three that is referring to the lens only. The F after the focal length of the lens is the Aperture. The lower the number, the more light the lens brings in. So a 50mm F1.4 lens brings in more light than a 50mm F2.8 lens. The increase in light however makes the depth of field more shallow. In other words, as you open the aperture up you lose the amount of area that is in focus. For instance a F1.4 lens might only have 1 inch in focus, where as a F2.8 would have 4-5 inches in focus. These are not exact numbers, but guesses. But you should be able to get the picture. The lower the number the more the blades in the back of the camera are open. That's right your camera has blades, pretty cool. An easy way to get this affect on your camera is to put your camera on the A setting, not Auto. And then play around with the thumb or finger wheel on your camera. You should see a drastic difference in pictures. 50 F1.8 lenses are a cheap alternative for spending a ton of money on pro level lenses, while still getting a great low light lens. All of them, Nikon or Canon, can be purchased for less than $150.00. Great investment for you hobbyists. 

    The above image is shot at F1.4, see how the flowers get fuzzy as you move away from the area in focus. Thanks for reading, if you are looking to learn more stay tuned, I am going to try and do a few more posts about Technical info. 

Rain Rain Go Away

Right now I am sitting in the car riding back to Opelika. Lucky for me Adrian, with www.adrianfreemanphotography.com, is driving for me. Its a long way and I drove all the way here, so we are happy to be headed home. The week was long and on Wednesday we shot pictures until about 9:30pm. Got some great images of Cincinnati overlooking the Ohio River Valley. I want to recommend David Ziser's Digital Pro Talk blog as one of the most informative blogs for photographers. If you are an aspiring photographer David has officially become one of my instructors and teachers of lighting and composition. Ziser does what he does better than anyone else. Check him out on the web at www.Digitalprotalk.com, He has some of the best tutorials on Adobe Lightroom and general photography that you can find anywhere. I would also like to recommend to everyone to attend one of his classes if he is in the area.

As far as Auburn Heritage Photography, we are going to really work on getting our site up to date and move into the new age of photography which is lots of cool digital stuff. Amy is going to have her hands full trying to learn from what I learned over the last few weeks. If anyone has any questions regarding our photography or what we are working towards just contact us.

Our latest deal is a $90 11x14 print for free with the booking of either our top two wedding packages. Call or email us for information.

Last Day

Last day for 25% off use coupon code: Taxweek

25% OFF

For the week of April 11-15, Auburn Heritage Photography is proud to offer 25% off of an order of $20 or more for all of our prints ordered through your gallery on our website. I know that lots of you have been busy with other things, if you plan on buying prints, now is the time. Since most of the time this week stinks for so many, we thought we would help all of our customers out. The code to get the deal is: Taxweek

Wedding Dates

For those of you that might know someone looking for a photographer please pass our name on to your friends. We are always looking for more work and are slowly filling up our summer dates. If anyone you know is looking, let us know, it would certainly help you get paid. $50 off your next session if you pass our info on. Just be sure to have your friends let us know, or just tell us yourself.

New Website and New Contest beginning in May

Over the last two years we have struggled real hard with whatt we wanted our website to look like. As many of you know, we have not been posting many blog posts, simply because we have been slaving away on our new and improved website. We really think that we found exactly what we are looking for in a website. One of our photographer friends recommended it to us and we tried it out and absolutely loved it. As many of you know, we are always looking to take pictures, and because of that we are going to start a drawing in which we will award a free photo session every Sunday afternoon that we are in town. Rules are posted on our new and improved website under "Information" and then "Specials". One of the requirements is that you must be close to Opelika/Auburn area, and must be a fan on our Facebook page, so join up. We are up for anything that you want to throw at us, well except something that might hurt. We look forward to meeting more of you and taking your pictures. Check out our new site in order to see all the rules for the "Contest".