In this Photo Tip, I will go through how to perfectly freeze a moment in time, every time, with no blur whatsoever.

If you look at the image below, what do you notice? A flying vulture? I immediately see the blurred wing-tips and that can be either a good or a bad thing depending on what you want to achieve.

The settings I used for this image were ISO 1000 and 1/640, the speed was too slow, hence the blur.

Now look at this image of a Brown Snake Eagle flying, do you see any blur on the wing-tips? No? That’s what I was looking to do, freeze the action.

My settings were ISO 500 and 1/1000 as the Eagle was flying against a backlit sky as well as flying relatively slowly.

Here are two separate images relating to elephants. In both I have frozen the moment in some way and in both, if there was blur, the image would not be the same and it would not have the same effect.

This one was set at ISO 400 and 1/2500 as it was very well lit and in direct sunlight so could raise my speeds up all the way.

This one was set at ISO 1000 and 1/1000 due to the light being quite diffused on a particularly overcast day.

In order to be able to get photos like these, you will have to judge the available light and therefore expose for your outcome. In order to freeze motion, you will need to use very high shutter speeds, often the only way to get the speeds up to where you need them to be to freeze motion is that your ISO will be higher than you would normally think it would be.

But what is fast enough? If it’s of an elephant walking at a plodding pace, you will not need to have the speeds much over 1/800 in good or bad light with ISO adjusted accordingly. If you are going to try photograph a leopard jumping from a tree to the ground, your best bet will be in the 1/2000 range at minimum also with ISO adjusted accordingly do not be afraid of raising your ISO in order to get the higher speeds as cameras these days tend to do very well with noise reduction.

Don’t just look through the view finder, look around...