High Speed Corners – Shutter Speed #2
Finding the spot was easy. I knew that when I laid down on the wet sidewalk I’d have a great low angle to frame a bike racer against the skyline as he made a turn into Uptown Westerville. The low view would place the rider in an exaggerated angle with the city’s small town building facades helping define the location and nature of the event.
The camera was positioned on a table top tripod where I adjusted the angle from the sidewalk. Placing the camera on a tripod allowed me to watch the riders approaching on the side street and return to the camera as they rounded the corner.
My timing had to be precise. Even with a motor drive at six frames a second, making sure the rider was in the open space at the right time was difficult.
A counselor once told me I should change my life by trying to stop anticipating everything. I need to go with the flow more often. She obviously didn’t understand that anticipation is primary to my work as a photographer. I told her to think of something else to change my life. She suggested modifying how I reacted to failed expectations. She didn’t understand photographers. I gave up on counselors and bought a new camera.
I upped my ISO to 800 knowing I’d need a high shutter speed to stop the lateral movement of the rider. Stopping lateral movement is difficult as the direction of travel for the subject is more easily blurred and a perpendicular movement.
I also had to watch the depth of field to make sure the rider was in the primary plane of focus with enough depth to keep the background sharp. Shooting with the wide angle Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 gave me enough depth for the ISO 800 to work.
Shooting on Aperture Exposure I shot a few test frames to make sure the shutter speed was high enough to stop the racers. It dialed itself in at 1/1600th of a second, more than enough to stop the motion, especially when other objects in the frame are already sharp and contributing to the composition and content.
After looking at the test frames and checking their histograms on the D300 LCD screen I didn’t dial in any exposure compensation. The cloudy sky and wet street made a great gray card.
Stopping the action wasn’t difficult at 1/1600th of a second.
I’ll write later about stopping lateral movement with adequate shutter speed settings.
