Shutter speed - why is it important in action shots?

I thought I'd just write a very brief post around the importance of shutter speed when taking photographs. I'm not going to delve into detail here around portraits, landscape or even talk about ISO. I literally wanted to share a few lines about why you should think about your shutter speed.

Let me head back to 2005 as I have in most of my recent posts. 2005 is the year I got into taking photographs. Also let me be clear I'm not a pro but somebody who just loves taking photographs.

The thing with photography is you should ideally enjoy what it is you're taking photographs of. Some of my favourite things include motorsport and aircraft so I found myself at an airshow and a few motor racing events during the year. It was a year of disappointment for action photos though.

In these early days I mostly had my camera set to "auto" and let it do the work for me. The problem with this is your camera isn't a mind reader and doesn't know what it is you're trying to achieve. In my case I wanted to capture the movement of aircraft and cars but alas I failed. Feast your eyes on the next few shots and you'll see what I mean. Each shot is ruined as I've not caught any action. There are no propellors spinning and no wheels turning; the moment is frozen in time. This makes for a lifeless photo.

All of the photographs above were taken with a shutter speed between 1/1000 and 1/3200 of a second. That's a tiny fraction and doesn't allow the camera capture any movement at all. Pretty amazing considering the speed a propellor or wheel turns at when a vehicle is moving at speed.

How lets have a look at some photographs where the shutter speed has been preset to either 1/160 or 1/250.

Can you spot the difference. Slowing the shutter speed down exposes the film (or sensor) to the action for a longer period of time which means it sees some movement. With motorsport this is usually combined with following the object as it moves past your point in what is called panning. The outcome is you'll see movement in the wheel and in the background as you move with the object.

Here's one last example of capturing action. In this case I did not pan with the object as I was taking a photograph of this street in Kos, Greece. It's very obvious the vehicle is moving across the frame; taken at 1/30.

So, don't learn the hard way, think about your shutter speed. I'll forever be disappointed of not capturing the movement with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (Spitfire, Hurricane and Lancaster Bomber in flight).

Note: All photos are un-processed and just posted for example.