Prairie Burr

[GuitarGeek153]

Hi everyone,

I am a newbie to photography and a virgin in the ways of Digital Photography School. So please, be gentle but stern. That is the only way I will learn!

I was wandering around a local prairie preserve focused on taking close-up shots of fall flowers and interesting prairie plant-life. There are a few issues that I came across while attempting to capture images. First, what is the optimal shutter speed to capture a close-up of plant life that is swaying heavily in the wind? I had a hard time with motion blur in a decently small aperture setting (eg. f8 or f11). When I had it wide, such as f5.6, it shot out of focus. Also, it was cloudy, and I took most photos at an ISO of 800. Is that too high? Also, in terms of image quality, shooting by hand in cloudy conditions with moving stuff, is 18 megapixels overkill? I cut this particular shootout to 8 megapixels on the fine setting, but would setting it to the rough setting fix some of my blur issues?

Here is an example of one of my better shots that captured what I was trying to portray. I spent about 5 minutes in my trial copy of Lightroom sliding bars back and forth to 'fix' the image, but all I ended up saving were my small contrast boost and my crop to fit my desktop background. Any and all feedback is welcomed!

Canon T2i
Canon IS 18-55mm
ISO 800, 51mm, f/5.6, 1/500sec
No tripod and no flash, shutter speed priority

[Hill Country Hack]

Welcome to DPS and posting so soon.
Addressing your questions- You picked a difficult thing to do in difficult conditions.
First, what is the optimal shutter speed to capture a close-up of plant life that is swaying heavily in the wind? The faster the better.
I reccomend going to the tutorial section of the site and read up on "exposure triangle". This will anser many of your questions.

The choice of apeture is dependent on what you are wanting to do. The more open the apeture (lower f number) the shallower the Depth of Field (DOF) will be. The smaller the apeture (larger f number) the deeper the DOF will be. There are tutorials on this site explaining DOF.

I do like your composition choice.

[GuitarGeek153]

Originally Posted by Hill Country Hack

Welcome to DPS and posting so soon.
Addressing your questions- You picked a difficult thing to do in difficult conditions.
First, what is the optimal shutter speed to capture a close-up of plant life that is swaying heavily in the wind? The faster the better.
I reccomend going to the tutorial section of the site and read up on "exposure triangle". This will anser many of your questions.

The choice of apeture is dependent on what you are wanting to do. The more open the apeture (lower f number) the shallower the Depth of Field (DOF) will be. The smaller the apeture (larger f number) the deeper the DOF will be. There are tutorials on this site explaining DOF.

I do like your composition choice.

Thank you for your feedback and for the welcome! I do understand the relationship between ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. I guess I could have answered my own question with the faster the better, and just judge it by how much I want to be in focus!

I am very curious, however, about how megapixels and the corresponding fine/rough setting affects taken shots. I haven't really seen much literature on the web regarding these settings. I wonder if taking photos such as the one above with a lower megapixel setting at a rough quality will help with blur or solely work to lower the size and hinder the quality