How fast do I have to be to beat this.

[lvcrtrs]

We'll call this "Blurry Bird". The bird itself was sharpened in PSE7 at 150 on the slider bar.
Shot at 1/1000 I thought it would stop anything. While blurry wings would be ok the head blur sends this one to recycle. How fast do you have to be to stop everything from blur? Not too bad at original size but not too good when I try to enlarge it at all.


Blurry Bird
F/8, 1/1000, 500, 105mm, Spot meter, Normal Program

Blurry Bird cropped

 

[PhotoXopher]

Bird must be from the Matrix!

 

[inTempus]

Nah, you're going to have to go way up there. I've tried stopping fast balls (80mph perhaps) at 1/1250 and they're still blurry. That birds wings are probably moving faster than that.

 

[Big Mike]

This was at 1/1000 and didn't stop all the motion.

Sometimes, a 'better' way to freeze movement is by using flash. A burst of flash will vary, depending on the flash and the power setting but it can be pretty fast. I saw a cool set up where a guy had rigged up several flashes, all set to the lowest power setting for a quick burst. He placed the rig where birds would be and triggered it remotely or maybe with an automatic sensor...it was pretty neat.

Sometimes, though...flash just isn't enough. Here is another humming bird I shot, this time with flash.

 

[UUilliam]

these birds are Super quick so a shutter of about 1/4000 is only sure way

you could always set up a few flash's though (not the built in, oh god never the built in flash) buy one that can work off the mount and set it close to where you PREDICT it will land but im guessing this was just al ucky shot in which case chances of setting this up with a flahs was low so id say lower the aperture speed up the shutter to maximum, stopped a speeding train for me

 

[Garbz]

Depends entirely on the bird. A humming bird may actually call for the 1/8000th your camera can do.

 

[msf]

these birds are Super quick so a shutter of about 1/4000 is only sure way

you could always set up a few flash's though (not the built in, oh god never the built in flash) buy one that can work off the mount and set it close to where you PREDICT it will land but im guessing this was just al ucky shot in which case chances of setting this up with a flahs was low so id say lower the aperture speed up the shutter to maximum, stopped a speeding train for me

Hmm, if your using a flash, are you not limited to the flash sync speed? If so, up the shutter to maximum should result in a dark picture, possibly with a small section of it exposed as the shutter curtain catches that part?

However if you use a small aperature, and a powerful flash, and a shutter speed of 1/200 or 1/250 *depending on camera* you should be able to freeze the action, with the ambient light not registering?

 

[musicaleCA]

A good flash will have a high-speed sync mode. That will allow you to sync up to much higher speeds (down to 1/4000, the fastest speed on my 450D, with my 550EX Speedlite).

 

[Gaerek]

Nah, you're going to have to go way up there. I've tried stopping fast balls (80mph perhaps) at 1/1250 and they're still blurry. That birds wings are probably moving faster than that.

You probably already know this, but I like math, and this is one of those things people can use to get an idea of what kind of shutter speed you need to stop different kinds of action.

80mph equals about 117 feet per second. At 1/1250 of a second, that means that the baseball traveled about 0.09 feet, or just over an inch. A regulation baseball is about 3 inches, meaning that in that 1/1250 of a second, the baseball traveled 1/3 of it's diameter, making it a noticeable amount of distance. Before I get some math nazis on here complaining about my calculations, I did round most of my numbers for simplicities sake.

Now, some people might say, "I was able to effectively freeze the motion of the cars on the freeway, and they were probably traveling 80mph." Most fullsize cars are around 16'. So that 1 inch it traveled wasn't much compared to the size of the car.

Although I couldn't find any data on the speed in which a hummingbird flaps it's wings, I did find that hummingbirds flap their wings about 50 times (up and down) per second. We'll take Big Mike's shutter speed as the example. In 1/1000 of a second, the hummingbird will flap it's wings 0.05 times. This sounds insignificant until you realize that it's still 5% of one entire stroke of the birds wings. You will definitely be able to see that still. Crank it up to 1/4000 of a second, and the wings are still able to flap a little over 1% of their entire stroke. However, for the purposes of photography, that should pretty effectively stop the wings, though if your camera is capable of 1/8000 of a second, that might be even better.

Sorry for outing myself out as a complete nerd. I enjoy math and showing people how to practically apply it, even if the calculations are fairly simple.

 

[Moglex]

No one seems to have mentioned (or maybe I'm the only one who thinks so) but the little bit of blur is very effective at adding some life to the picture.

Had it been fully 'stopped' it would have been technically impressive but a bit sterile.

It's just a pity that part of the bird is against a similar coloured background, something I am plagued with when doing 'in situ' plant photography.

 

[musicaleCA]

Sorry for outing myself out as a complete nerd. I enjoy math and showing people how to practically apply it, even if the calculations are fairly simple.

Pft. I'll only consider you a real math geek when you derive integral calculus for the fun of it, or spit out the equations describing a Riemann Sphere, just for kicks.

Props to Moglex for reminding us all of the artistic side of photography...wait...photography is an ART? No way!