hey cris, thanks for stopping by. bear with me; i can be verbose.
the “specs” on the first shot are: f/6.7, 0.1 sec (1/10), ISO 100, 11 mm.
in english, i used a “moderate” aperture, a very slow shutter speed, a low iso, and an ultra wide focal length.
on the second shot, it was: f/2.8, 0.25 sec (1/4), ISO 400, 11 mm
a wide aperture, an even lower shutter speed, a moderate iso, and the same ultra wide focal length.
the aperture, or “f-stop” as it’s sometimes referred to, is of very little consequnce in these two shots. it basically has nothing to do with how they came out.
in and of itself, the aperture is primarily used to control the depth of field (or “DOF”), which is a range of distance from the camera that is acceptably “in focus.” wide apertures (low numbers) have a shallow DOF, and narrow apertures (high numbers) a very deep DOF. obviously the wider aperture also lets in more light, so it has an effect on exposure as well.
the shutter speed is pretty self-explanatory. in both of these shots i used a shutter speed that is rarely if ever used in traditional hand-held photography… it’s VERY slow. any movements will be blurry. in these examples i used that to my advantage to give the illusion/impression that things ARE moving. not just the object i was photographing, but also the viewer/camera.
in both cases i did not simply trigger the shutter… i paid particular attention to panning the camera across my field of view in an attempt to keep certain things static “in the frame” and thus in clearer focus. only relative motion between the camera and object will be blurry. if you time your movements precisely, and keep the relationship between camera and object exactly the same, then you can get perfect sharpness and focus despite the slow shutter.
as an example, in the first pic, i kind of missed my target–the booty. i was actually rotating around a point that was too high and to the left–i nailed the shelf about 1/3rd of the way down on the left. you can see how clear and sharp it is.
in the second pic i was really aiming for the “shop” written on the glass door. you can still make it out, so i did pretty well. i shot that from my driver’s seat as i was driving; you can make out a shadow/ghost of my rear-view mirror in the top left corner.
the iso was really a consequence of how much light i had at hand. i will generally try to shoot as low as possible. if i want grain, i’ll add it in post processing where i have more control over it.
the ultra wide angle helps out for these extremely low shutter speeds because it provides a more stable frame of reference. there’s an old rule of thumb for 35mm that says most people can hand-hold a camera that’s shutter is set for no slower than 1/(focal length). so in the case of a 50mm lens, anything 1/50th or faster can be hand-held without too much blurriness or difficulty. obviously with an ultra short focal length of 11mm, very slow shutter speeds can be successfully utilized.
(caveat: the “rule” was “true” for 35mm based media, but in the case of most digital SLRs the sensor area is smaller, by about 1.6x. a 50mm lens on a typical DSLR is actually more like 80mm, and thus would require a 1/80th or faster shutter to be reasonably sharp, and my 11mm works out to something more like 1/18th second.)
so to answer your question in cliff notes version:
a steady hand, good timing, and slow shutter speed.
the ass was ok.. the butterface, otoh… **shudder**
that was not me the gestapo were after (this time). that was right in front of larry’s. pretty strange if you ask me–he appear to have pulled over a plow truck.
I read the “directions” on how to get those first few and it makes my head spin. I think I’d be more likely to just move the camera a bit to make it blurry.
