digital photography

xdrive photography learning – 19 – high speed photography

Raj (XDrive ) writes that high speed photography allows the photographer to freeze motion as it permits “only a fraction of a second for the sensor to ‘see’ the scene” and the sensor “is going to record things at standstill even though they are moving.”

I set out yesterday with my camera set on autofocus with continuous focusing and the ISO at 800.  After coming home and doing a bit of deleting, I still have heaps of images…412.   Regrettably, most of them will be tossed into the trash because I assumed that setting my camera on manual and using the highest f-stop that the shutter speed would automatically record at 1/4000 to 1/8000 seconds.

Why did I chose manual…well, before leaving home I initally set my camera on shutter speed priory mode and saw that the camera seemed to prefer lower f-stops.  So, my first  mistake came with the assumption that there is a correlation between high f-stops and shutter speeds.  I also failed to set the camera on center focus and was not able to correct this decision as I left my glasses at home…sigh. Also, I did not pay attention to the shutter speed throughout the walk…and as you can see in the image below there are no frozen water drops…just a bit of blur, bubbles, and tiny pellets as well as a rock (lower right) in focus.

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Nikon D750   f/22   1/250s   85mm  ISO 800

The rain and snow last night left a bit of ice under a layer of snow…so will have to delay my return to the creek, when it is a bit warmer, to create motion frozen water drops with more attentive intention.

Yet, not all was lost…

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Nikon D750   f/22   1/640s   85mm   ISO 800

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Nikon D750   f/16   1/1000s  85mm   ISO 800

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Nikon D750   f/16   1/500s   85mm   ISO 800

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Nikon D750   f/22   1/500s   80mm   ISO 800

Thank you Raj…I appreciate these lessons and your feedback.

orchid

orchidweb

The poetry of Japan has its seeds in the human heart and mind and grows into the myriad leaves of words. Because people experience many different phenomena in this world, they express that which they think and feel in their hearts in terms of all that they see and hear. A nightingale singing among the blossoms, the voice of a pond-dwelling frog–listening to these, what living being would not respond with his own poem? It is poetry which effortlessly moves the heavens and earth, awakens the world of invisible spirits to deep feeling, softens the relationship between men and women, and consoles the hearts of fierce warriors.

~Ki no Tsurayuki, (preface Kosinsbū, ca. 905)

looking deeply into a flower

springblossoms“Nothing can exist by itself alone. It has to depend on every other thing. That is called inter-being. … Looking deeply into a flower, we see that the flower is made of non-flower elements. We can describe the flower as being full of everything. There is nothing that is not present in the flower. We see sunshine, we see the rain, we see clouds, we see the earth, and we also see time and space in the flower. A flower, like everything else, is made entirely of non-flower elements. The whole cosmos has come together in order to help the flower manifest itself. The flower is full of everything except one thing: a separate self, a separate identity.” (Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear, pp 47-48)