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wysoczanski · Jun 12, 2009

for those who take pictures of moving objects such as a bird flapping its wings, what should the settings be to actually freeze the wings??? and for like a moving car:for example nascar: how would you freeze the car without blur???

im using a nikon d1 camera and theres a lot of bird pics i took that either the birds wings are blurry or the bird itself...how can i fix this??

thanks for looking and helping

saltface · Jun 12, 2009

Whatever it takes to bring down your shutter speed. Increase your aperture or ISO.
If you're taking pictures of hummingbirds, good luck.

Josh220 · Jun 12, 2009

Increase your shutter speed until you find one that works. All birds and cars travel at different speeds, so it's hard to give one generalized setting. I'd try 1/500 sec then increase it from there. You may need to keep going through 1/640, 1/800, 1/1000, etc.

PhotoXopher · Jun 12, 2009

At LEAST 1/500 shutter speed but usually quite a bit faster.

Here's a crazy blackbird from today:

1/800
200 ISO
F/9

As you can see it's still blurry:

Yet in this one the same settings worked much better:

Big Mike · Jun 12, 2009

It depends on the speed of the movement, relative to the camera.

You can get a sharp picture of a nascar, even with a relatively slow shutter speed, if you pan the camera along with the movement of the car. That won't work for bird's wings, but it could work for the bird itself, if you can smoothly pan along with it's flight.

But the best way to freeze movement is with a fast shutter speed. Getting a fast shutter speed may require the use of a lens with a large maximum aperture and probably a high ISO setting.

NateS · Jun 12, 2009

Yeah, these are two different techniques. Birds you want a higher shutter speed, but with cars you don't want such a high shutter speed because you want motion blur in the wheels. If you shot 1/1000 of a moving car it would probably appear to not be moving. I think 1/125-1/250 seems to be what a lot of people use for panning cars if I remember correctly. I think I've seen some people go even slower.

KmH · Jun 12, 2009

As Mike alluded to, the shutter speed needed will depend on the direction of motion relative to the camera. The highest shutter speeds will be needed if the camera is not moving and the motion is parallel with the image sensor plane (side-to-side or up and down).

The least shutter speed is needed when the motion is perpendicular to the image sensor plane (straight at or straight away from).

With subjects like the birds the wing tips are moving far faster than the feathers at the birds shoulders plus they tend to be moving pretty close to parallel to the image sensor, so it takes a fast shutter speed to stop the wing tips.