More fun with motion

 
Today's workout was a beast. Burpees and Squats- lots of 'em. I wanted to do some more experimentation with slower shutter speeds so I delayed my own workout so that I could shoot everyone else's. This was probably one of the best ones I took. After MUCH trial and error (I started with my aperture too large and my shutter speed too fast) I finally started getting some decent shots. I like this one because it has a stationary subject as well as moving ones. John (in black) was about half-way through his workout when he took a few seconds to regroup. Ben and Raman (the blurs) were forging ahead in the background. To get the shot I used a shutter speed of 1/8 sec which is longer than I'm comfortable with and very difficult to hold steady. But I took advantage of John's stationary pose and focused on him and it worked out.

My one regret is that the ISO is so high (800), leading to more noise than I care for. By this time I had stopped down the aperture to f/11 so that I had a generous depth of field in which to work. This results in less light getting to the pixels, though, causing the camera to compensate by using a faster ISO. If I had used a wider aperture to let in more light, my pictures might have gotten more blurry due to the narrower focal range. It's all about trade-offs; my problem is, I don't know how many more feet each f-stop buys me in terms of depth of field so I can't estimate on the fly what my setting should be. This is why I experiment.

Here's another example of what happens when you experiment:
 
I honestly don't know how I got this shot, but it's kinda neat. I know I was playing with panning and the second curtain (also called trailing curtain) flash mode which synchronizes the flash with the end of an exposure. This gives a sharp crisp impression of the subject rather than an amorphous smear across the image. As you can see (and against all possible odds), Ben's face is in focus while everything else around him has a weird ethereal smeared look to it. What I think happened was this: instead of just snapping the picture and letting the trailing curtain flash do it's thing, I picked a point (his face) and panned the camera while he did his burpee to keep it stationary. This was a little tricky as you have to follow the person for a few reps and get a sense of their rate. (pssst- you get better shots toward the end of a workout because people are 1)slower, and 2)more expressive. A nice sheen of sweat helps to round out the image as well.) Anyway, somehow this shot came out but I'm not sure I could do it again. I also liked the color so I kept it as is.

For more of my experimental shots, check out Burpees Up, Squats Down.