Enewsletter
June 2009

Knowing how to set your camera up to capture these creative shots is critical. “I never use Shutter Priority mode, simply because if you ask it for a shutter speed that’s quicker than the amount of light you have, then you’ll get an underexposed image,” says Costantini. “You can shoot in Manual, or Aperture Priority mode will work as well. If you have your camera in Aperture Priority mode and you open your lens up to the widest possible aperture it has (like F/5.6, F/3.5 or F/2.8), you’ll always get the fastest possible shutter speed based on how much light there is on the scene.”

Keeping tabs on your ISO can help control the final result. “Ideally, you want to use a low ISO to achieve a better-quality image, but if your options are a higher ISO and getting more noise, or a lower ISO and a blurry image, you’ll usually want to accept the noise and opt for freezing the action,” adds Costantini.

Faster aperture lenses can also assist you in challenging situations. Costantini was able to stop time as an exuberant Sydney jumped into the air, umbrella in hand. “I used an f/2.8 lens for this shot (Tamron’s SP AF28-75mm F/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical IF Macro),” says Costantini. “Lenses with faster apertures are much better for freezing action because they allow you to have a faster shutter speed. This shot froze the action just using available light. The slight grain in the image is from using a higher ISO.”

 

Because there was plenty of light outside as Sydney leapt into the air, Costantini was able to stay in autofocus. “Because she’s jumping, her movement relative to the plane of focus of the camera is the same—she’s not moving toward me or even across my plane of vision, just up and down,” he says. “Once you focus on her, any movement in that plane should be in focus, as long as your shutter speed is quick enough to freeze the action.”

Tapping into autofocus is fine most of the time, but it can prove difficult to capture motion if you’re focusing in low light. “Autofocus needs light and contrast to work—sometimes it might be a little slower focusing in low light,” explains Costantini. “So if you’re trying to do something with an action aspect to it, you might miss the shot. Sometimes people are afraid to use manual focus because they think it might make the entire camera manual, but in reality there’s just a switch on your lens—everything else on your camera stays the same except for your ability to work the focus.”

Photographers can also tap into the Vibration Compensation (VC) feature available in several of Tamron’s signature lenses to help freeze action from the photographer’s side if the subject isn’t moving. “The stabilizer prevents motion blur from the photographer’s hand-shake when shooting at lower shutter speeds,” says Costantini.

Freezing action is an effective technique by itself, but you can expand upon that even more if you’re able to both freeze action and capture motion blur. “This technique adds a dynamic element—you’re taking what’s basically a two-plane still and instilling energy into it with motion and movement,” says Costantini.

There are two ways in which you can achieve this effect: “Your subject can be moving as you stay still and your flash will freeze the action (the movement will blur in the background), or your subject may remain stationary as you’re physically moving,” says Costantini.

For the image of a boy peddling along on his tricycle, Costantini’s flash froze the exposure, keeping the tyke relatively in focus while the background blurred. “If you use flash, the flash can effectively freeze the action despite the fact that the background is blurred—because your flash happens in a fraction of a second, it creates a pretty quick shutter speed that can be really effective to freeze the action,” he says. “The shutter speed was open for longer than I could effectively handhold, so you’ll see the blur because the camera records everything that happens in front of it for as long as the shutter is open.”

 

If your subject is still, you can move yourself and your camera to achieve a similar effect. “I photographed a girl on the city streets,” Costantini says. “She was still, but I was moving, so most of her is pretty crisp, but there’s this ghostly blur in the background street scene. When you expose the picture, the shutter speed is open and records everything in front of it, so if your subject moves, it will create blur, but if you move, you can also create blur.”

 

In his shot of a young girl on a tire swing, Costantini and his subject were both on the swing. “Relative to each other, we’re not moving that much, but we are moving fast relative to the rest of the world,” he says. “Even though the panning action is the result of the swing moving, if you stay focused and follow your subject, you increase the relative speed between your subject and you and increase the chance of getting a clear shot.”

 

Knowing where to concentrate the shot is key to getting the image you want. “I focus on my subject’s eyes a lot of times,” Costantini explains. “It’s also definitely easier to focus if your subject is moving across your plane of vision rather than toward you. There’s a focus mode on your camera you can select, usually called Servo or AI Focus, which follows the action—it follows the action, so as your subject moves, it constantly readjusts the focus. That can be helpful if your subject is moving toward you. Another thing I’ll sometimes do: If I have a little control over where the subject is moving to, I’ll prefocus at the point where I want to actually take the picture, so my subject will be out of focus until they move into that exact spot, which is when I’ll take the picture.”

Above all else, don’t be discouraged if you don’t get the effect you’re looking for right off the bat. “It takes a little bit of time to practice and get used to using your equipment in this way, but once you understand how it works, you can get this effect pretty easily,” says Costantini. “It’s trial and error. For the tire swing shot, for example, I technically used a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second, but in reality, it would depend on how fast the swing was moving—if we were going really slow, I’d need a really long shutter speed to get that blur, but if we were going really fast, I’d need a faster shutter speed to get the same blur. I had to experiment until I got the effect I wanted.”