05/28/2016
Why do my mountain biking photos always turn out so blurry.
Do you ever ask yourself this question?
Our smart phones are nothing short of amazing devices and their capabilities as a camera are rather incredible. They are so good that they manage to take photos decent photos in some varied light.
Mountain biking, especially around here, is often on lush trails in the forest with considerable canopy. Even on the sunniest days it is relatively low light as far as photography is concerned. While it may not seem dark for you, ‘the camera’ automatically adjusts its settings and effectively uses a slower shutter speed.
This adjustment works great for the more static or scenic shots, unless you get some blur from not holding the phone still enough, but that is another discussion. The issue is the moment you try to capture a mountain biker zipping down a trail or off a drop you get an image with a blurry smudge of a rider and you cannot make out that ear to ear grin never mind recognize their face. Action photography typically requires higher shutter speeds.
While at times a blurry subject conveys motion and can be quite creative and effective, the viewer generally wants to see the subject sharper and in focus. Since you cannot really manually change the settings on a camera phone to get a faster shutter speed on low light, I often use a technique where I blur the background and keep the rider in focus. It is called blur pan and you can read about how to master the technique in my post here.
https://medium.com//blurring-photos-to-perfection-with-mobile-pan-blur-e96b57a60b84 #.i493ytxtn
