Luminous Landscape Forum

The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: Lost on October 03, 2010, 02:37:58 pm

Title: Stopping motion
Post by: Lost on October 03, 2010, 02:37:58 pm
This is a photograph that I wanted to work, but which unfortunately is just too blurred.  In this case, the photograph was taken late at night (part of a series of pictures of the Merce in Barcelona), hand held while panning to try to catch the childs face as sharply as possible while trying to leave everything else motion blurred.

It was taken at 1/8th second, f5.6, ISO 1600 at ~50mm on a 1.6 crop body without flash.  Any suggestions as to how I could have caught the child more sharply while still keeping the background blur?
Title: Re: Stopping motion
Post by: PeterAit on October 03, 2010, 08:50:39 pm
If you want just the child's face sharp, and not the rest of the child, then I have no suggestions. If having the whole child sharp and the background blurry is your goal, then depth of focus is the obvious answer - but perhaps too obvious?
Title: Re: Stopping motion
Post by: wolfnowl on October 03, 2010, 08:58:37 pm
I'm assuming you were panning with the child's movement?  That should help keep the child in focus and blur the rest, but you can't really expect anything involving movement to be in sharp focus at 1/8th of a second.  I'd try a slow synch flash with panning and increase the shutter speed some.

Mike.
Title: Re: Stopping motion
Post by: Lost on October 04, 2010, 01:28:00 am
I wanted to freeze the child, keeping an in-focus but motion blurred background.

I tried some fill-flash, but anything bright enough to freeze the movement resulted in a very flat and very overexposed subject (this was outside, so there was nothing to bounce off and the surrounding lights were very bright).

I suspect that maybe the only way to do this would have been to take a burst of faster images and then use photoshop to interolate the blurring, but I instinctively recoil from doing this much editing.
Title: Re: Stopping motion
Post by: pegelli on October 04, 2010, 02:09:49 am
Under these circumstances and the fact flash didn't help either there's probably nothing else than just keep trying and practicing and vary shutter speed during that process to determine the shortest shutter speed that still results in a sufficient blurred background. Don't worry about 40 or 50 failed attemtpts, it's the one keeper that counts.

Other idea to make it stand out is try to catch the split-second standstill at the extreme end of the swing and use a larger aperture so the background is outside the dof. However then probably the sense of motion is gone as well.
Title: Re: Stopping motion
Post by: Eric Myrvaagnes on October 04, 2010, 09:54:15 am
I think the present image is quite fine. The kid's face is sharp enough to read the expression, and all else is blurred nicely. I doubt whether
the whiz-bang high-tech suggestions that have been made can produce a more satisfying image. This one is quite expressive and has a feel of authenticity, IMHO.

Eric