One of the commonest sorts of posts in these forums is "How do I take photos of.....?". It's really nice to see how many of these get helpful answers.
However, one thing that occurred to me was that a lot of the advice is quite prescriptive: "Do this", or "Do it this way", or "Don't do that". That's fine, but for people who are relative beginners, or don't have a lot of confidence in their ability or their mastery of their cameras, I think it can be a bit intimidating. OK, the guy says I should use a shutter speed of 1/1000th or faster, but why? What difference does it make? Can I get away with 1/250th? And so on.
So here's my idea. I suggest it might be helpful (and fun) to post some tips with practical illustrations of what happens if you do it one way and what happens if you do it another way (the wrong way!).
I've contributed (below) an example of what I have in mind, to get the ball rolling. Remember, I'm not claiming by any stretch of the imagination that this is meant to be definitive - it's just meant as a helpful and practical illustration to give people the confidence to go and try it themselves.
If you think this is a good idea, please contribute some more technique tips - and remember the illustrations! Some suggestions off the top of my head:
- What difference it makes using the right focal length for portrait photography.
- How fast the shutter needs to be to stop the action in [Insert your favourite sport here].
- Depth of field effects.
- How long a lens do you need for bird/wildlife photography.
OK, here's my starter. What kind of shutter speed do you need to blur the water in a waterfall?
Obviously it depends to some extent on the speed at which the water is flowing. This illustration is of a fairly small waterfall, but the river was quite fast-flowing; I would imagine it's reasonably typical in so far as any waterfall can be typical. From left to right the shutter speeds are 1/30, 1/10, and 1/2. To my mind the one on the right is far better - which points to the need for a tripod (or other means of bracing the camera: I took these by sitting the camera on a bean bag on top of a guard railing).
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.
