how to achieve prop blur

[Rotor]

I'm getting a bit ferklempt.  I'll give you a topic: Prop Blur, blur is not proper, but prop blur is.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Show your opinions and give your examples.  How low should you go, how low CAN you go while still handholding?  If given a static but running propjob, should you keep it at typical 1/250th or try for slower?  Should you keep it around 1/250th for flying jobs, or try for 1/100th or less?  Is a full arc a goal, or too much?  What is your opinion?

Part 2, show your best.  How low can you go while still handholding, with or without IS?

The Taxiing King Air here was at 1/40th 380mm, Commander was 1/60th 240mm.  I don't think I could have done either without IS...

-Mike

[M.M.]

Well, I prefer having a good swing visible -- say 30°-60° per blade, like the sample below.  A full arc can look really cool (Damien B's Dutch P-3 photo in Military Avaition being a good example), but it can be too much of a good thing.   I find a full arc doesn't suggest motion as well as blurred yet distinct blades do. 

For engines at idle I'll usually try to shoot at 1/60th to 1/125th.  Any slower and you're forced to small apertures where diffraction will cut down on sharpness.  For takeoffs or high-speed flybys, 1/250 is sufficient because the fan is turning faster.  THis speed also balances prop blur with operator blur.   

I find the VR feature on my Nikkor 80-400 is great for smoothing out my panning and helping me frame a long tele image, but if anything it increases camera shake below 1/125th.  I turn it off for low speeds, and instead sit down and use my legs or some other object for support.  Standing up, I find my body obeys the inverse-of-the-focal length rule for camera shake, so I use that as a guide to whether I should stay up or crouch down.  I tend to shoot a lot of stuff from low angles anyways, to clean up the background.

-M.M.

[Roger]

Same as Mark...

 

[M.M.]

At the risk of making this look like a mutual admiration society, I'll add that the prop blur effects in Tyson's and Roger's photos from Paso Robles are just about ideal, to my mind.

-M.M.

[Roger]

I love to just go all out and shoot everything a 1/60th... but it's just a waste of bits most of the time, especially while shooting flying birds.

That comment about "that's how your eye sees it" is interesting Jorgo.  I think that in my images, or any images for that matter, one wants to capture the moment.  It's a still, so to me it doesn't have to look exactly how my eyes saw it at the time I took the picture.  I try to freeze that moment in time, so any indication of movement is good enough for me.  Now if I were shooting video I would love to have it exactly as my eyes saw it.  But that's just a personal preference.

[tvrphoto]

I think alot of it depends on the aircraft as well.  With a full rotation, could you be able to tell this was a C-130J?

I try to shoot everything around 1/250 with helos being at 1/160 - 1/125.  Of course, shooting with a large lens (I mean heavy and bulky 400 2. it's not as easy to get a slower speed than that.  Even though the magnification is the same as the smaller 100-400, the big glass acts as a sail in the wind.

A full prop blur can be quite dramatic if the light is just right...so once again, I think it depends on the aircraft and the situation.

[Roger]

Hey, shouldn't this be in Tips & tricks?!

 

[Liza]

And, now it is.  

[Victor Archer]

I've just started playing with the prop blur. I love the effect but quite a few go to the recycle can. Shot as slow as 1/50th hand held with IS. Now I keep a monopod in my camera bag.

[Tonyz]

Dang....how did you freeze the center prop and get full blur on the outboards?   

[tvrphoto]

There is yet another variable in determining prop blur...your background.  When you lower the shutterspeed, you raise the aperture enabling more of the image to be in focus.  Less depth of field.  This shot was of Bill Stein flying over the Pinnacles National Monument in California.  Technically, a reject!  With the background in focus (minus a little motion blur), it becomes too distracting.

Bill has already agreed to another shoot over the ocean which will prove less distracting.

The flip side to getting an image with a higher aperture is when you WANT the background in focus.  The second picture is of Sean D. Tucker flying over the Oracle headquarters in San Carlos, CA.  This gave full rotation prop blur.

[Rotor]

Tried the 30-60deg sweep this morning.  1/60th sec.  Of course lighting went to **** the minute this thing taxied out.

I did find that I'm getting more winners in the 1/60-1/100th range... and still great blur.  Full circle still is cool though...

-Mike

[Erik]

It really depends on the kind of aircraft, the conditions etc. Like everyone else - I try to get prop blur but I won't risk a completely blurred picture by camera shake. I aim for somewhere between 1/125 and 1/250 .. sometimes 1/350 will still work for some blur, I use that when it's very windy.  When I can, I try to shoot at various shutterspeed, to see what I like best. At other times, there's little time so I just use a speed I'm comfortable with.

I think this was somewhere around 1/125th but I'm not entirely sure - there's no EXIF info hidden in my K64 slides



(Yes I posted this one also in the chopper topic but I don't have any other examples handy at the moment. And I'm a firm believer of..........you never can see too many Huey's )

[trevortex88]

Here's the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum's Fairey Firefly at 1/60.  this was my first time out with an SLR camera, so please be gentle.

[M.M.]

Nice prop blur, Trevor.

Two helpful suggestions unrelated to the prop:
1. Be aware of stuff in the background.  We all tend to concentrate on the plane we're focusing on when taking a shot.  By doing so, sometimes we don't notice other things in the picture like other aircraft, ground equipment, lamp posts, orange cones, etc.  Try to spot this stuff before you press the shutter release, and either wait for the plane to move, reposition yourself, or work it into the image.

2. Hold off shooting until the plane is fairly big in the viewfinder.  Switch to a longer focal length and/or get closer if you can.  (Unfortunately this isn't always possible, especially with flying shots.     )

When we look at a plane in person, our brains filter out other things and our eyes focus on a very small area.  Cameras capture everything.  One of the hardest skills to pick up in photography -- of planes or otherwise -- is the ability to "see what the camera sees," and make it match what our eyes and brain saw.  To come back on topic, making a prop look like it's moving in one example of this.

Hope this helps,

-M.M.