

Propeller at 1/8000 on a Leica M8 - peteforde
http://www.flickr.com/photos/leftist/4942946126/

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lzw
I'm guessing that this means he had a really fast lens on the camera? I'm
still in point and shoot land, so I'm going to be getting and education in
shutter speed vs aperture in various lighting conditions soon.

But it seems given that i have taken 1/1000 pictures in bright sunlight wide
open in the past, to correctly expose at 1/8th the shutter, you'd need 8 times
the light, or 3 f-stops of a faster lens.

~~~
peteforde
Close, lzw. I did actually have a really fast lens, but in fact it was the
camera that mattered in this situation: most cameras max out around 1/2000
these days. 1/8000 is crazy fast.

On most camera systems, the shutter is on the camera and you modify the
aperture (size of the hole!) on the lens. The reason Hasselblads are pricey is
because 90% of the mechanical parts are in the lens; the body is really just a
film holder.

Anyhow, two bits of advice/wisdom: first off, once you jump into SLR world and
start your learning curve — and you should, it's a lot of fun! — don't be put
off by the apparently complexity. I wish I'd understood early on that most of
the terms and acronyms are just intentionally confusing stuff designed to keep
"serious" photography in the realm of the elite. You'll notice that there are
millions of beginners and a good number of "experts" but very few folks
calling themselves intermediate photographers. That's because there's loads of
info for getting started, but mysteriously nothing to help people really get
past the first steps into Neo territory.

So yeah, don't spend a lot of time trying to memorize charts. With practice,
you'll internalize it in a way that you can make pretty good judgement calls
on exposure.

The second thing is that it all gets a lot easier when you figure out that
artistically, aperture and shutter speed yield different end results. 95% of
the time you should be shooting in aperture priority.

The reason for this is simple: shutter speed just decides how bright your shot
will be, while aperture allows you to decide on the actual composition of your
shot. Once you focus on an object, with aperture priority you get to decide
how much of the shot is in focus. Many times the reason to use a low aperture
is to blur out the rest of the image ("bokeh"). You rely on the camera to
figure out the right exposure for the image you're looking for.

At the end of the day, it'd be really weird to make an artistic decision based
on exposure speed. That means you'd have to adjust your aperture to suit a
speed, which means you give up control of how much is in focus. The only time
I can think you'd really want to do this is shooting waterfalls, propellers or
on extremely bright days.

Can I strongly recommend that you pick up a Panasonic GF-1 and the 20mm
pancake lens? It's an amazing gateway drug camera, before you plunge into
getting SLRs.

[http://craigmod.disqus.com/gf1_field_test_mdash_16_days_in_t...](http://craigmod.disqus.com/gf1_field_test_mdash_16_days_in_the_himalayas/)

