![]() We’ll cover when and when not to use them. Tripods are a must in most situations, but just helpful in others. Take note that you don’t need a tripod every time. Using it to keep your camera steady will help you control the blurs in your image. To blur motion, you need a camera with manual mode so you can keep the aperture open for a long time.Ĭapturing creative motion blur in photography also often requires a tripod. They use their cameras, much like artists would use their brush to paint abstract elements. But sometimes, they can use it to convey action, much like how cartoonists draw lines to indicate their characters are moving.īetter yet, photographers also use motion blur in photography to create surreal scenes. Typically, photographers try to avoid blurred motion at all costs. As the camera completes the exposure, every movement the sensor records will manifest as streaks and light trails. Motion blurring happens when the shutter stays open for a long time. Unlike background blur, the lens is not responsible for causing motion blur in photography. It’s determining whether the strobe should fire at the beginning of the exposure or at the end.What Is Motion Blur? But still, there’s one more setting to consider. With the ambient and flash exposures now dialed in and working together, you’ll see a flash exposure that renders the subject tack sharp along with an ambient exposure to provide the blur. This is the last resort because you’ve already got the ambient exposure and the blur dialed in, so changing the aperture will entail adjusting the shutter speed by an equal amount to compensate. Failing that, you’ll have to adjust the aperture. If these output adjustments alone don’t hit the perfect flash exposure, consider moving the flash closer to the subject to make it brighter or farther away to bring it down. ![]() If you need less, turn down the flash output to 1/8 th or less. If you need more flash, turn up the power to half or full power and shoot another test. Set it to quarter power to start because it provides a couple of stops of adjustability in each direction, then shoot a test shot to see if it’s correct. Short of that, however, or if you’d like to really understand exactly how this exposure technique works-adjust your strobe’s output manually. With a speedlight, on-camera flash or smart external strobe, TTL may be available to determine the correct amount of flash for a given scene. ![]() With the ambient exposure and motion blur dialed in, it’s time to add the flash. If what you’re photographing is very fast moving, a faster shutter speed may be slow enough to allow for blur. This will likely entail slowing down the shutter speed to, say, 1/30th or ¼ or a full second or more-and then adjusting the aperture and ISO as necessary to maintain the correct exposure for the ambient light. So before proceeding to the strobe exposure, make sure the ambient creates not just adequate illumination but also motion blur that’s to your liking. Depending on how fast the subject is moving, this may or may not provide enough exposure duration to create motion blur. Let’s say, for example, that the correct amount of ambient exposure is 1/60 th of a second at ƒ/8 and ISO 200. Remember that there’s no single right amount of ambiance or blur if it looks good to you, that’s what counts. It ultimately takes experimentation in any given scenario to determine what looks best. Too much ambient exposure will create an overpowering blur. Step one is to determine the correct ambient exposure, which should likely be a bit underexposed since it’s strictly to provide motion blur. You’ll want to think about the exposure in two separate parts-the ambient and the strobe. To make this kind of image, all that’s needed is an on-camera flash or external strobe. It’s a lighting technique that provides the best of both worlds: sharpness where you need it combined with blur to add to the illusion of motion in a still photograph. Meanwhile, ambient light registering on the moving subject for the duration of the exposure will create motion blur. It works because the strobe of light from the flash is such a short duration-1/1000 th of a second, for instance-that it’s effectively acting as a shutter speed of 1/1000 th for the instant it fires, briefly catching the subject in illumination from the strobe. Combine motion with a flash of light, however, and you can create an ideal blend of a sharp subject with a trail of motion blur. But the problem with this approach is that it’s awfully easy for the entire scene to become too blurry. And for good reason-as a stationary camera and a moving subject create motion blur, so does panning the camera to keep the subject sharper while the background blurs. When many photographers think about techniques for accentuating motion blur, they consider shutter speed exclusively.
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