Shooting movement seems to go against the grain (pardon the pun) of what a photographer wants to do – to freeze a moment in time, and capture it on film for ever. Yet, who doesn’t take great pleasure in photographing a child crossing the finish line, muscles straining, or a bicycle spraying water in jets around the rider as a puddle is traversed at speed? This short article looks at some of the ways we can capture movement on a DSLR camera, and, while no substitute for a structured photography course, or an online photography course, it contains some tips on successfully shooting movement.
Camera movement isn’t always a mistake
It sounds wrong, but one of the best ways of capturing movement is to pan your camera, (keeping it unmoving vertically, but moving from right to left, or left to right) following the action as it moves across your field of vision. Use a tripod and try to photograph something, or someone, moving along a fairly straight line in front of you, so you can guess where they will be as your pan finishes. The result will be (with some luck) a focused subject, with a blurred background, adding to the feeling of movement. This technique should be used with a fairly slow shutter speed (try 1/30 to begin and see what effects you can achieve by slowing the shutter speed down) but do remember that the slower your shutter speed, the more chance you will have of camera-shake, which may ruin the shot. Panning is great for photographing moving vehicles, cyclists and trains – anything which moves in fairly straight lines. Also, if your camera is an older digital model, you might have to deal with shutter lag – that horrible moment when you click, the subject passes, and then you hear the shutter open and close, resulting in an empty screen. If this happens, try to predict where the subject will be at the moment you know the delay on your camera will end.
All freeze
Another really useful tip for photographing movement is to try to freeze the subject against its background, which, if you think about basic camera anatomy, is a really simple idea. If you use a very high shutter speed, the action only falls on the sensor for a very short time, allowing you to pick out just the tiniest moment from a moving scene in front of your camera. Shutter speeds on modern DSLRs can go as low as 1/8000 of a second, and professionals often use settings as high as this to achieve those prize-winning sports photographs we see in magazines and news-papers. The Canon EOS 450D instruction manual advises that very high shutter speeds range from s 1/500 to 1/4000 of a second. Try out different speeds with moving subjects, until you learn which settings work for your own camera, and remember, you can always discard unwanted images on the spot, saving valuable storage space. Some of the settings on your camera require a little bit of getting used to, so a good photography course, often costing less than the price of a flashgun, can sharpen your knowledge and improve your skills. Search online, but opt for a well-known course which covers all the basics, and which takes amateur photographers’ skills up several levels. One course worth looking at is the Advanced Diploma in Photography, delivered online by the Institute of Photography, where they take you from understanding your camera and its settings, right up to learning the tricks of the trade from a professional’s view.
Continuous Shooting
One final way of capturing movement, and possibly the one which will give the greatest fine detail and facial expressions, is to use your camera’s continuous shooting mode. This will be called different things, depending on your camera’s manufacturer, but look for AI Servo or Continuous Focus. These modes refocus the camera on the subject as it approaches, or moves away from the lens. In this mode, you can simply hold the shutter in, and the camera will continue refocusing, opening and closing the shutter and recording images, until you release the shutter button. A technique definitely designed for sports day at school, where, standing behind the finish line, watching your child run towards the camera, you can capture extremely dynamic shots as they strain towards the tape.
