50 | PhotoPlus July 2014

Skills Exposure settings

Focal length To capture the action from a distance you’ll need a fast telephoto lens. We used the Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3, which covers an effective focal length range of 225-750mm on an APS-C D-SLR like our 60D. As longer focal lengths accentuate movement, you’ll need to use a fast enough shutter speed to eliminate any signs of camera shake; it helps if your lens incorporates image stabilisation technology.

Reciprocal rule Another factor that will dictate

your choice of shutter speed is the focal length of your lens. If you’re shooting handheld, your shutter speed shouldn’t be slower than the reciprocal of your effective focal length; so, for example, if you’re

shooting at a focal length of 500mm your shutter speed

shouldn’t be slower than 1/500 sec.

Shooting handheld We’re shooting handheld, so we need to ensure that our shutter speed is fast enough to capture pin-sharp shots; you could optionally use a monopod to support a big lens and minimise camera shake. You can also select your D-SLR’s Continuous or High speed Continuous drive mode, so that you can fire off a burst of frames to improve your odds of capturing a winning shot.

Location and weather For our shoot we travelled to Newquay in Cornwall to photograph two professional surfers. For the best results you’ll want to shoot on a sunny day to capture blue skies and colourful surf. Unfortunately, on the day of our shoot it was grey and overcast; however, this did make it easier to capture balanced exposures, without clipping the highlights in the white water and shadows of the surfers’ wetsuits.

Shutter Priority mode To take control of shutter speed, set your camera to Shutter Priority mode, which appears as Tv on your camera’s Mode dial. When you select Tv mode you can set the shutter speed you need in order to obtain the desired result – perfectly sharp shots or some degree of motion blur – and this won’t change unless you alter it. The camera will automatically adjust the aperture to capture a standard exposure.

Shutter speed The shutter speed required to either freeze or blur movement will depend on how fast your subject is moving. In this instance we want to freeze the action, and if we set a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/60 sec our subjects will be badly blurred. If we increase the shutter speed by two stops, to 1/250 sec, our surfers will still appear blurred – we need to increase the shutter speed by another two stops, to 1/1000 sec, to ensure that we capture sharp shots.

The need for speedYour shutter speed has a bearing on how movement is captured, as well as on exposure