Lesson number .5
feet and wheels move faster than the dog, human, car... great examples in the shots in this thread. the go cart wheels are blurred even thought the body is sharp because of the differences in the direction and type of motion. A runners feet are also good examples, when in contact with the ground, (assuming the camera is connected to the ground by tripod or photographer) they are motionless relative to the camera, at the top of the wheel or the runners stride they are traveling very much faster than the object they are attached to. If you want to see this phenomena in slow motion/mega scale watch the treads of a bulldozer or walk along beside one keeping track of a single tread. Adding to the complexity - if you really want to... put the camera in motion... you get my thought??? Einstein said it first - motion is relative... and we don't get to pick our relatives.
This is one of the complexities of shooting cars/runners - who do you want the wheels/feet to look?
Rolling shutter effect - photoing dragsters at the end of their run, even using film, you can get a rolling shutter effect, top of the wheel/car is at a different position by the time the slit of the shutter blades expose it compared to the bottom of the wheel/car. Sometimes this cool, sometimes not - which is the car "leaning". This will happen with anything moving really fast... relative to the shutter blades. Remember the shutter is only really all the way open up to 250th or so, then it becomes a traveling slit (someone will double check me on the precise speeds) this is typically a notch faster than the fastest flash sync speed.
If you can use a flash to "stop the action" with little/no exposure coming from ambient (natural/existing) light the leaning/rolling effect can be largely done away with.
Happy shooting!!!!





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