1st question! What’s classed as a fast shutter speed photograph? This is when a picture has been taken at a fast shutter speed that is faster than 1/500th of a second.

Fast shutter speed records movement and makes it static. A fast shutter speed freezes the moving subject like pausing a sports program. The faster the subject is moving requires the faster the shutter speed.

The main types of photography that require a fast shutter speed are:

• Sport photography

• Photographing moving animals

• Action photography

• Liquid or water photography

History section to learn and know

Harold Edgerton

1903: Harold Edgerton is born. The electrical engineer and photographer will change the way we see the world: fast. Edgerton invented stop-action, high-speed photography, helping push the obscure stroboscope from a laboratory instrument into a household item.

Another type of fast shutter speed photography is called ‘High-Speed Photography.

High-speed photography is used when you want to take good photos of objects in motion. Fast-moving objects are my favourite subjects for this kind of photography. It’s like you freeze a particular scene in motion and record it with your camera. High-speed photography also means capturing a series of images at a high frame rate.

HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY - Can be used for shooting liquids or water.

Take a look at this video which shows another photographer experimenting with high-speed photography like ‘John Smith’

From watching this video and reading the video comments, this is a simple process that you could have a go at, but please if you do, make sure that you are safe in the process as you are breaking glass.

Here are some key points that I have noted down:

• Play with different materials within the glass object

• Trigger the camera when you see the action about to happen. Set your camera on manual focus and set it to multiple shoots so that you capture all shoots as the glass object breaks.

• The settings used for this activity can be used with similar objects like water, bullets, and a range of glass objects

  Settings used - 1/1600 sec, f4.5, use a lower ISO, and use manual focus.

How do I? Or what are the best settings to use when using fast shutter speed?

I have touched upon high-speed photography which is used for capturing liquid and water, but what about when on location and attempting to capture that sporting action or animal?

Here are some tips to use:

• The most obvious is to use a fast shutter speed

• Open up your aperture and this means let more light into your camera.

• One key point to remember capturing action of some sort is best taken with a fast lens.

• A fast lens is a lens that will enable you to shoot from f/2.8 or f/4. If you have not got a fast lens then shoot from f5.6

• Keep your lens at a set focal length as the aperture will change if you are zooming in with a zoom lens.

• Play with increasing your ISO. You should use the lowest ISO setting you can get away with, but there will be situations where you'll have to push it higher than you'd like. This is frustrating but remember - it's better to have a noisy photo than a blurry one.

• As you are attempting to capture a moment, these can happen within a second so set your camera on burst mode, but be aware you may get multiple blank images. Use your camera's continuous shooting mode (often called burst mode) to take 4 or 6 shots at a time, giving you a much better chance of capturing a good image.

• One key tip that commercial photographers use when attempting to capture that perfect moment is to use a Miops trigger.

• This is very important! You need to perfect your white balance as the multiple light source in a gym or sporting event will add a blue or orange tone to your images. When outside use could decide to use auto white balance, but when inside try either of these Fluorescent or Tungsten/Incandescent 

• Turn off your flash

• Set your focus and switch from multi-point to single-point focusing, and use the focus point at the centre of the frame. Make sure that you set your camera on continuous focusing mode (called "AI Servo" on Canon cameras) so that you don’t want to miss the action when shooting with ‘One shoot’ focusing.

These are a brief selection of key points for you to consider when increasing your speed and please be aware that you will use or have a set setting for photographing a football game compared to photographing a moving bird.

After reading this blog you should have learned about fast or high-speed photography. If this interests you, but you do not own a camera, then take a look at this ‘YouTube clip about using your smartphone to capture a high-speed shot and take a read of my next blog on using your camera to take either slow or fast shutter speed photos.

If You Would Like To Have More Information And Learn More, Then Please Give Me Some Blog Suggestions In The Comments Below Or Arrange A 1:1 Photography Session With me.

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