Freezing Action with Shutter Speed (2019) - Lesson 8 of 10
Welcome back to Lesson 8 of our 10 part series “The Ultimate Guide to Shutter Speed.” If you’ve missed any of the lessons, go to https://davidmolnar.com/shutter-speed. You’ll get bite-sized lessons, tutorials, suggested shutter speeds, cheat sheets and more.
In our last lesson, we talked about why and how to use long exposures. This lesson is all about how to freeze motion in action shots.
To freeze motion, you need to use faster shutter speeds. Fast shutter speeds allow less light to enter the image sensor, so it freezes motion.
But just how fast do you need to set your shutter speed to begin to freeze motion?
The best way to discover this is to set your camera to AUTO ISO and put your camera into shutter priority mode (Tv mode on a Canon). Start experimenting at 1/60, because this is the lowest shutter speed you can successfully shoot handheld. Gradually keep increasing the shutter speed until you have a crisp image.
When you have a fast-moving subject, say kids running, birds or sports, you’ll often see blur in your photos. This isn’t because your camera is out of focus. It’s because your camera captured the motion of your subject - which shows up as a blur in your photo.
To freeze motion, you probably need to be shooting at shutter speeds of 1/250 and up. Depending on how fast your subject is, you may need to shoot at shutter speeds of 1/1000 of a second or even faster to freeze motion.
To check if you’ve successfully frozen motion, import your photos into Lightroom, then press ‘i.’ This brings up an info screen - the first number you see is shutter speed. Next, zoom into your images and see whether or not they are crisp. When you start seeing crisp images, check the shutter speed. This is a good starting point the next time you shoot this particular subject.
Another creative effect you can get with shutter speed is panning. When you move your camera along with your subject’s movements, sometimes you can freeze your subject while the background is a soft blur. It takes practice, but panning can expand your creative options.
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