Pixiq

Action shots in photography can often best be captured by using a fast shutter speed .  This method is great to use when photographing quickly moving subjects such as; athletes, animals, vehicles, water, or anything else that’s moving fast!

How fast is fast?

That’s the real question.  Many photographers would probably say that anything faster than 1/60 sec. is a fast shutter speed.  But that’s not really fast enough for freezing every kind of motion.  It’s all relative and subjective.  For example; the image above was shot at 1/400 sec. and would have been considerably blurry at 1/60 sec.

It’s this subjectivity that requires every photographer to consider these questions when you want to stop the action in your photographs.

1. How fast is the subject moving?
2. How close am I to my subject?
3. What lens am I using?
4. How much light am I working with?

Fast shooting requires lots of light!

This ties into a couple of those questions above.  How fast is your glass?  Can you open it up to f2.8 or are you limited to f5?  You may have to push your camera’s ISO to a higher number to allow the shutter speed required to get a good exposure.

This of course brings into question the limited amount of focus you have based on your subject’s distance and you’re aperture.  You’ll have a shallow depth of field with a larger aperture so you need to watch your focusing plane.

Lot’s of stuff to consider but, like most things in photography, can be learned and mastered with practice and patience!

Photograph Go Fast 2008 by Martin Uzkurelis