Working with Shutter Speeds

Although I am comfortable with the concept of shutter speeds and how to apply them, since taking the Level 2 course I had mainly worked in Aperture mode and had not much call for them so far. So I decided to move out my comfort, and review what I had been taught in line with the summer assignment.
My intention was not to repeat the waterfall type slow shutter speeds where you see the white flow of the water, but to experiment with the faster speeds, I also wanted to experiment in an environment that I had control of, so I could repeat shots to perfect the timings.
So while making a cup of tea one morning, and boiling the kettle I noticed how the water moved around under the influence of the convection of the water. Fortunately we have a glass kettle so I decided to set up my camera and equipment.

Rather than just use the standard 18-55mm lens for the Canon, I also wanted to try it on my Sigma 70-300mm lens especially the Macro function.

So using a tripod and a little bit of additional lighting from a LED torch with baking parchment on it i set up the kettle and made a few test shots. with the 70-300 lens first and then the 18-55 lens.

So using the 70 – 300mm in Macro the effect of the 1/4000s speed gave me exactly what I wanted the down side was the Aperture to hold the depth of field forced the ISO up to 6400 causing a lot of noise in the images hence I made several mono versions of the ones I liked the most.

I particularly like the fact at first glance your not sure whether it’s a molten material.

Kettle – F11 1-4000Sigma ISO 6400 Mono 2

My take away from using the macro lens was that to maintain a reasonable depth of field the f-stop had to be quite narrow down at F11, this I assume is because of the relationship of the exposure triangle meant that the ISO had to be high to compensate which introduced noise into the pictures. So lesson learnt you need to have more lighting either a defused light source, or flash, or both to help bring the ISO down to a reasonable level to eliminate the noise.

Next stage was to do the same test with the Canon Lens. It produced much the same results due to the exposure triangle.

A wider shot of the kettle, by using the de-haze function in Lightroom Lr you can add more noise to give it a more misty look and using the noise generated by the high ISO in your favour.

Again by slowing the shutter speed we get the more flowing lines like string feeling as opposed to the more detailed individual blobs of water.
Also the lower shutter speed means we have a lower ISO number so a lot less noise in the picture.