Creative Shutter Speed: Master the Art of Motion Capture

Chapter 6. Shake, Rattle, and Roll Your Camera

You're about to undo the most sacred of all camera rules: "Thou shalt hold your camera as steady as humanly possible."You're not only going to undo it, you're going to smash that rule to smithereens. You're going to do things with your camera that seem not only zany, but crazy. Guess what? They are. And so are the results, too.

Figure 6.1. With a relatively fast shutter speed such as 1/60 or 1/1 25 second, you can predictably count on fairly sharp results but with less of the motion-conveying blur that results from using a slower shutter speed, such as 1/8 or 1/15 second. Exposure at 1/60 second, f/18.

But they'll also be amazing results. Pictures that are amazingly bad, amazingly good, and, best of all, amazingly fun, especially for those of you with a creative rebel clamoring to break out Now you'll get to play with your camera as if it were a ping pong paddle instead of a fragile electronic device. For a brief time you will no longer pursue that perfect sharp picture because you'll be after the far more elusive perfect blurred picture, Best of all—you get to decide what's perfect.

To enter the photographic world of shake, rattle, and roll. prepare to pan, zoom, jiggle, wiggle, spin, jump, and swing—usually with your camera. Although the destination—and your pictures—will be totally unpredictable, getting there will be a blast.

So remember ...