Stock Shot Project

We wanted to do this blur motion shot in our daylight studio where the foreground would be sharp and the background person blurred.  Ordinarily, this would be easy, but on a bright day in a daylight studio it can get a bit tricky.  Here's how we did it: We knew that 1/20sec was the perfect shutter speed to provide the blur we wanted for the background.  At the same time, we wanted to have a lens aperture of around f/2.8 to deliver a shallow depth-of-field.  Even at ISO 100 this would be difficult on a sunny day, which this was.  The solution was to use one of the new variable-neutral density filters on the lens. Dialing it down until the camera meter indicated a shutter speed of 1/20th second at f/2.8 did the trick.  Simple -- so long as you have a variable ND filter.  Yet another example of the effect of advancing technology on photography.