The importance of shutter speed is something that we can sometimes undervalue by attempting to use ISO values that are too low when creating photographs. We may read articles or view videos that are adamant that we should always shoot at low ISO values. While this can be appropriate in specific situations, using a low ISO and sacrificing shutter speed as a trade-off, can be problematic.
Category Archives: Photography Techniques
Handheld Moon Photography Test
This article shares a handheld moon photography test image that I created yesterday evening using my E-M1X’s Digital Teleconverter and M.Zuiko MC-14 teleconverter. I’ve never been very interested in astral photography, and as regular readers know, I hate using a tripod. The combination of those two factors has resulted in me pretty much ignoring moon photography.
Spoiled by Technology
Lately, I’ve been wondering more and more if photographers have become spoiled by the technology found in their camera equipment. Over time, we’ve been treated so well by camera manufacturers that many of us fail to really appreciate the incredible image making power of the gear we hold in our hands every day. There really is no such thing as a ‘bad’ camera system today.
Dragonflies Landing
This article shares a selection photographs of dragonflies landing and discusses technique, including the use of Pro Capture H to create these images. All of the photographs in this article were captured handheld during a short 90 minute visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG).
Insect Kit Field Test
This article shares some recent insect kit field test images and discusses the rationale behind this particular equipment set-up. I suppose when many people think of insect photography the first gear that comes to mind is a macro lens. While I do use a macro lens for insect photography quite often, there are occasions when a macro lens is not a particularly effective piece of kit.
Blossoms From a Distance
It can sometimes be a challenge to photograph blossoms such as water lilies… from a distance… and still get the entire flower in focus. Often we don’t have the physical access needed to get close to subject flowers. As a result we can be forced to use a longer focal length telephoto zoom lens for our compositions. This can create depth-of-field challenges.
Shooting Through Glass
As photographers many of us face the challenge of shooting through glass as it may be the only option we have to create a particular image. While this is not an ideal condition there’s a few simple things we can do to minimize the effects of shooting though glass.
Photographic Rabbit Hole
A photographic rabbit hole exists, and if you choose to go down it you’re pretty much guaranteed to sub-optimize your small sensor camera’s capabilities. That photographic rabbit hole is equivalency.
Slow Shutter HHFS
This article discusses using slow shutter speeds with handheld focus stacking (HHFS), and shares some new macro snake images captured with shutter speeds from 1/20 to 1/4 of a second.
Yesterday I visited a special frog display at the Royal Botanical Gardens… which also happened to have a trio of water snakes in one of the exhibits. The event gave me the opportunity to get some practice time in doing handheld in-camera macro focus stacking. Continue reading Slow Shutter HHFS
Getting to Infinity
Often when it comes to landscape photography, one of our primary concerns is finding the best way of getting to infinity in terms of depth-of-field. In our quest to getting to infinity, we also need to think about the required shutter speed given any movement caused by wind, as well as our ISO value. As we all know, the higher the ISO value used, the less dynamic range we will have available for our photographs.