Quick photography tip: Motion blur using controlled shutter speed

by Jatin Valabjee

Have you ever seen a photo of a sporting event or event with high-speed action such as car racing, and seen the person or car blurred as if they were still moving? This specialised but easy-to-achieve technique of capturing motion is called motion blur.

So, how do you go about capturing motion blur using your camera? The good news is, if your camera has any manual features (even if it’s not a Digital SLR), you should have no problem capturing it. Try this:

1. Next time you’re out with your camera, find a moving subject. A car or a person walking past will do.
2. Set your camera’s dial to Tv. On the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT, this is the dial setting to use:
3. Use the arrow keys on your camera or the scroll wheel if you have one, to control the value that appears on your screen. You should see values like 1/200, 1/2000, 1″ etc. These are fractions of a second (more on this later). Set it to about 1/15.
4. Hold the camera steady or rest it on a brick wall or similar, and take a photo when a car or person enters the frame.
5. Notice how the subject is slightly blurred, giving the appearance of motion, while the background stays in focus (if you have held the camera steady enough).

The woman in this photo Martin Place, Sydney, is given a sense of motion by controlling the camera’s shutter speed.

So how did this work? With the steps above, you were controlling your camera’s shutter speed. Shutter speed is a relatively simple concept: While your camera’s shutter is open, it is capturing everything (light and objects) that pass in front of it. In step 2, you set your camera to Tv mode, which tells your camera “I will tell you how long I want the shutter to be open (the shutter speed), and you figure out the rest”.

In step 3, you set the shutter speed to 1/15th of a second, which tells your camera “When I press the shutter release button, leave the shutter open for exactly 1/15th of a second”. As the person or car passed in front of the shutter, it recorded this for 1/15th of a second, which creates that lovely motion blur effect.

A combination of bounced flash, controlled shutter speed and tilted camera angle lend a sense of excitement and motion to this shot of a DJ in Civic Hotel, Sydney.

(good) I used a short shutter speed in this shot at the Oaks Hotel, North Sydney. Notice how there is no sense of motion in this picture.

The long shutter speed in this similar shot gives it much more visual interest and makes you look twice.

Motion blur produces some wonderful effects in these kinds of situations:

• Car headlight streaks at night (try setting up your camera on a tripod on the side of a road and taking a 10 second exposure)
• Sparklers (see above)
• Fireworks
• Fire twirlers
• Waterfalls

You can see more examples of controlling shutter speed at Wikipedia.