Ben Hines: Motion Blur & Architectural Experiments

These are my first experiments of motion blur taken with a Canon EOS 550D with a Canon EF-S 18-55mm lens without a tripod.

This was one of my first photograph that I took experimenting with shutter speed.

I first found a good spot where different vehicles were driving past at high speeds. I then made sure there was a good flat surface for my camera to rest on so that when the shutter was open I didn't get any blur on my photos other than the blur of the lights on the vehicles.

I then chose to set my camera to the 'TV' setting, so all I had to do was change the shutter speed and the F-Stop and ISO would be chosen automatically. I set the shutter speed to 5 seconds because I felt that this would hopefully just capture one vehicle as it went passed. These are the other settings which the camera chose automatically: F-stop: 7.1, ISO: 100.

I really like this photo because I pressed the shutter perfectly when a bus was going at full speed, because the bus was going at full speed in a straight line the light blur from the bus is really smooth.

5 Second Shutter Speed, F-Stop:8, ISO: 100.

This was then one of my other motion blur photograph which I am really proud of because of the smooth blur of the tram. For this Photograph the camera settings were pretty much similar other than the camera had chosen to make the F-Stop a bit higher. I feel that this changed because I was in a different location where there was much more light coming from East Croydon station.

10 second shutter speed, F-Stop: 10, ISO: 100.

I really like the light blur in the photo of the bus but feel that I should of chosen a different location as the lamp post is in the centre of the photo.

6 Second Shutter Speed, F-Stop: 8, ISO: 100.

1/20 Shutter Speed, F-Stop: 4, ISO: 3200.

I really like this because of how the bus has past as I was taking the photograph of the 50p building, I am now going to try and use this effect to take photographs of motion blur with architecture in the background. To do this I feel that I will need a tripod so that I can point the camera at different angles to be able to capture the best frames.