Motion Blur

Photographers despise any kind of errors in the pictures they click and process. Photos with errors immediately find their place in the recycle bin. But did you know that some photographers purposely create errors for magnificent effects? One of these errors is called as the Motion blur effect. Of course, this procedure occurs due to manual setting errors or camera usage errors but one has to know how to eliminate it in order to reproduce it.

A motion blur occurs as a continuous streaking of a moving object when captured as still images. Various causes lead to production of motion blur: Shutter, Aperture and Camera motion.

How does a shutter work and what is shutter in a lay man's language?
A camera shutter is very similar to the eye lid of a human. The shutter operates like the battling of your eyes. Now try this. Keep staring at an object and close your eyes. After a constant period of time of staring, no matter how much you try to shake it off you can see the outline of the object. This is exactly how your camera shutter works. Every click of the picture closes and opens the shutter and thus allows the digital sensor of the camera to capture light. A camera shutter has its own timing to capture the light which is then stored as data into the camera's digital sensor. A blur is caused when the camera shutter is open for a longer time and it captures the image without refreshing or erasing the changes in light. Hence, for the purposeful blur effect the camera should be tuned such that the shutter is open for a longer time! This is done using the Shutter Mode of the digital camera.

What is a camera aperture and how does the aperture work?
A camera aperture is simply the hole through which light enters the camera. This is very much analogous to the pupil of your eye. When you look at yourself in the mirror, notice how your pupils open wide. This is what happens in the Program Mode of your camera. The aperture automatically changes size to allow suitable light into the camera. Photographers often try to adjust the shutter speed to compensate light for the motion blur effect, but sometimes you really don't get the perfect shot. This is when you try by adjusting the aperture. Motion blur is practiced mostly on illuminated objects and sometimes when there is too much of light, the effect is not captured properly. Aperture can use as a fine tune knob for the perfect exposure.

How does camera motion affect motion blur photography?
Motion blur effects are also created using camera motion. This is done when the object is still.

This image on the left is the motion blur created by simply moving the camera to make a 'P'. Remember, everything the camera sees is inverted. The object, candle was in single position while the camera moved creating this alphabet through the wonderful effect.

The image on the right is not very different from the one on the left. The camera was being shook more violently in a random manner so create these sine waves. In both cases the subject was a candle in still position.

Almost all cameras now have the option in Aperture mode which can be used to change the aperture or the size of the opening through which light passes onto the sensor. There is no default or fixed aperture and shutter setting for the motion blur effect. Every lighting condition has a different combination setting. Try venturing by changing and clicking at random.