Assignment 2 - Shutter Speed

Part 1 - Spinning Object

Reflection

This series shows how shutter speed impacts blurring due to motion. With shutter speeds below 1/250s, there is blurring. While the blurring is more extensive at lower shutter speeds, the rotational speed of the umbrella was not enough to fully blend the colors together. The series would be far more interesting if the umbrella could be spun much faster so that the colors truly blended together. Alternatively, this could be achieved with a really long exposure ...

So I did a second series, this time indoors on a dark and gloomy day with ISO 80, so that I could do much longer exposures. I ran a series from 1/2s to 10s. After 2.5s, there was no appreciable difference. Notice that at 1/2s, the colors are blended but still separate in terms of their position on the color wheel.  By 2.5s , they have completely merged into pink.  

Part 2 - Panning

Reflection

Frankly, I was disappointed, but not surprised, by the higher ratio of substandard, as opposed to good, photos I obtained from this assignment.  Rotating at the right speed was very difficult. Keeping focused on a single spot on the subject was critical for success. It didn't help matters any when I inadvertently activated the high-resolution feature in my camera, causing the camera to take several seconds to save images, and interrupting several attempts at a high-speed sequence. The "high-resolution" mode button was close to the shutter and thus easy to hit by accident.  For all the photos, I had to use a very low ISO of 80, which was the lowest my camera would go, and high f-stop in order to use a long shutter speed given the bright sunshine.

My favorite photo from this series is "Bus in Motion" as the blurring makes it look like bus is traveling at substantial speed. I think it also helped that the bus was much larger in the field of view than the Train in "Train in Motion," which was because it was closer to me. The "Bus Turning" was also interesting since it shows that different parts of the bus were moving at different speeds relative to me as it turned. The text "Good Day" is reasonably  clear while the text increasingly blurs towards the back of the bus. Looking at the image closely, the blur is "horizontal," which leads me to believe that it was due to motion rather than lack of focus.

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