Action shots need two important things, great lighting and a really quick shutter speed. If you have young children you know how fast they can be right? Running around the garden, bombing into the pool, on a bouncy castle, playing football, the list is endless but all you need to know is that the shutter speed on the camera needs to be quicker than the child! You’ll have no more blurry streaks, just nice, sharp images to be proud of. On a point and shoot just turn that dial to sports mode or on a camera with manual settings you can set the ‘Shutter Priority’ to whatever you like and the camera takes care of the rest of the settings, I usually set the shutter speed to 1/400 second or higher to absolutely freeze the action.
Have fun with it and try various speeds to see the difference that can make to any image. One tip is to pan, which is to follow the subject with the camera. This technique can result in a super crisp subject but with a very blurry background. Go ahead, try it!
VIX
I love this shot and wish I could show you a few more from the series. This boy had just scored a goal and his celebrations were the stuff legends are made of, this moment with his coach though just sums up how happy they both were. F5.6 1/640 sec Canon 5d MII
MEGAN
I was practising action shots, and my kids were delighted as they got to bounce on the bed! I caught this at a shutter speed of 1/100 on f/stop 5.4. I love it – it’s almost as if she’s floating!
PENNY
Here I used off camera flash to freeze motion and capture the water as it fell.
NAT
This shot was taken at the Singapore F1 and was a lot of fun to shoot. I had several attempts to capture the cars as they raced by me and managed to get just the right sweet spot for one of the turns. I pre-focussed and as soon as the cars came into sight I ran off several shots using the Canon’s continuous shoot mode. This was one of the best images I captured that night. The noise was incredible, so grateful for the ear defenders! My heart was racing with the adrenalin rush. Shot on a Canon 5D mark II, with 70-200 2.8 L IS USM lens. F 3.5, ISO 5,000, 1/500.
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