shutter speed

[Emel]

could anybody help me with this please. most of the time on the photos babies hands or feet seems to be moving. What do I need to do to get a still image

e?

 

[480sparky]

More light or a higher ISO.

 

[Buckster]

What Sparky said. You need a faster shutter speed, and that means more light (Get up to speed with off camera flash) and/or higher ISO to achieve it.

Also, I personally wouldn't have a headline behind a baby shot that talks about a crash that killed 4. I'd lose the "Honda" label on top of his head too.

 

[Emel]

Thank you for your reply. I am going to cut the headline. I only realised it after taking the photo.

 

[TCampbell]

I could joke and tell you that you should take the photo when the child is sleeping... but that wouldn't be helpful.

Ultimately you need a faster shutter speed.

The concept of "exposure" is that you need some amount of light to correctly expose the image in the camera. If you have twice as much light entering the camera, then the shutter only needs to be open half as long. Following that logic... you can increase the amount of light enough that the shutter speed is very fast -- so fast that the child could be bouncing up and down and you'd capture a frozen moment in time with no motion blur at all.

If you increase the ISO setting then it reduces the total amount of light needed to make a correct exposure and that would allow you to use a faster shutter speed. But increasing the ISO has the side-effect of increasing the amount of "noise" in the image and while most modern cameras can boost ISO somewhat and still look good... there is always a point where it is boosted to the point that it looks bad. You'd need to know your camera.

A lower focal ratio would be a big help too. If you shot (and don't do this... this is just an example) at f/8, you'd get a nice sharp image with reasonable depth of field provided nothing is moving. But if you could shoot at f/2.8 instead of f/8, the camera lens collects three "stops" of additional light and each stop doubles the amount of light... so that's 2 x 2 x 2 or 8 times more light (which means you can now speed up your shutter by that same amount.)

As a side benefit to the lower focal ratio... it would also reduce the overall depth of field and that would help blur the background. I usually do not want my backgrounds to be sharp. The reason you are getting comments about the headlines and advertisements on those newspapers... is because we can READ that newspaper. I think it would be better if that newspaper was blurred and not readable at all.

Lastly... you can add more light either by moving your subject to a location with more light -OR- you can add light by using supplemental lighting... like flash. When you use naked flash you get a tiny intense point of light and that well-defined point source creates well-define edges on your shadows and those look bad. But if you use a broad light source then you get a broad hightlight/shadow transition and the lighting looks much better. So shoot the flash through something that has the effect of making the light appear to originate from a big broad source. An expensive way to do this is with "shoot through" umbrellas. This is an umbrella with white fabric which is translucent. You shoot "through" the umbrella (hence the name) and it looks like the whole surface of the umbrella glows with light -- rather than just the point source of the flash. A higher quality way to do the same thing is to use "soft boxes". With an umbrella, some light will kick back and go the other direction and may light up parts of the room you don't want to light. A soft-box has an enclosed back so the light can only exit via the front an you have more control over the light.

But one nuance of using "flash" is that you can't shoot at shutter speeds faster than your camera's "sync" speed. That's often 1/200th. but some cameras can do 1/250th... some cameras may only do 1/160th. It doesn't really matter though... because the flash itself is SO fast that it tends to freeze the subject even though you're not using an ultra-high shutter speed.

 

[spiralout462]

In this particular photo more light would not only allow you to increase your shutter speed, it could also light up the other side of the baby's face that is cast in shadow. Besides umbrella's, softboxes, and off camera flash, a simple reflector might give you better results.