Help with shuter speeds if you would

C

coalfire

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75
Name
Ben
Edit My Images
Yes
Was out today sat in the car waiting for the wife to come back, when i noticed windmills on the hill spinning quite nice, and thought I would have a go at trying to get a picture with some blur to suggest them moving.

However all i get is a bright white picture :shrug: I tried in Shutter priority at various speeds and also in manual changing the apperture as well all to no joy :bang: what am i doing wrong?

As you can tell still new to all this and trying to figure it all out.
 
shutter priority should fix the shutter speed and then automatically adjust the aperture.
can you post the photo so people can have a nosy?
bright white piccy probs means that you overexposed it.
if there was lots of light it could be that the aperture couldn't shut down enough to compensate for your shutter speed..

so what was the light like?
what shutter speed? what aperture and what ISO were you using?
 
The problem with shutter speed priority is that a lot of lenses have a limited aperture range with which to balance your choice of speed for a correct exposure. From your description it sounds like you were overexposing.

You need to set the ISO to it's lowest setting and set your aperture to it's smallest setting (largest number) this will give you the slowest shutter speed for the available conditions. If it was a really bright day, even this may not give you a slow enough shutter speed to get the blur you were looking for.

The alternative is to use a neutral density filter.
 
I would suggest the simplest way to do tis is to use shutter priority. Not sure how fast the sails are going round but you may need an exposure from between 1/10 to possibly a couple of seconds.

The latter may be difficult in bright conditions even with a slow ISO ratting. This may be why you are getting unacceptable results. You are probably going to need an ND or similar filter to help reduce the light getting to the sensor. But what strength?

Have a look and see under normal conditions what exposure gives you a decent image ( don't worry about getting movement into the sails.) Try to get to the slowest speed you can. Now on a sunny day with ISO 100 setting this is going to be around 1/60sec at f22. To get it down to about 1/10sec you are going to need a 3 stop ND, for 1/2sec around 5 stop.

Naturally with such exposures you are going to need some support for the camera to prevent shake

Hope this helps
 
Ok I think you guys are right (overexposure) just looking at the data now and all the pics jave used auto iso at 1600 which is obviously waaayyy to high, will have to try again next time I am there and alter the iso as well in manual.

Thanks for the explanations from you all
 
If you're stuck without an ND filter, check the glovebox of the car (or even the front of your face/top of your head). You might well find a pair of sunglasses. They might not do on the front of an SLR but in front of most compacts and bridges they work quite well. Even if they're tinted rather than plain grey, the auto WB of the camera will probably cope with the cast. Depending on the shades, you'll probably get a 2-3 stop drop through them which may be enough to get the shutter speed slow enough to get an idea of movement in windmill sails.
 
Have a pair of foldup sunglasses in the front pocket of my camera bag, never thought of holding them over the front. Thanks for the tip :thumbs: Going to try playing with shutter speeds again tonight not sure on a subject yet though
 
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