I went out and by chance a medical helicopter landed near the beach I was at with my family. I decided this would be a good approach for a tutorial or how-to.If you do a google search for helicopter shots, there are tons that show the helicopter frozen in place with the rotors absolutely pin sharp, in mid air. It does not look natural. So how do we change that?

• a DSLR with Shutter Priority (S, for Nikon; Tv for Canon)
• a good grip on focusing in motion (learn more here)
• a good telephoto lens if the object is far away

Shoot in Aperture priority or Shutter priority. If in Aperture priority mode, use your wheel in the camera to adjust the Aperture if the shutter speed changes.. When Shooting in Shutter Priority, make sure you shoot with an Aperture wide enough for enough light to come through and the photo does not turn black.

• Focus: Switch to continuos focus (AI Servo for Canon) so that the focus re-adjusts as you move.
• ISO: Try to get the bet ISO as possible but make sure you set it. Auto ISO will mess with your image and settings of Aperture and Shutter.
• Aperture: Adjust as needed to get the shutter-speed you want
• Shutter: try to stay at about 1/100 of a second for moving rotors. Try if you can get lower.

The average rule of thumb is that rotor blades operate at about 400 to 500rpm (revolutions per minute). This gives us about 7.5 rps (revolutions per second). That in turn is about 0.13 seconds per revolution. Essentially all you have to do is shoot slower than that. The slower you go, the longer the blur of the rotors.

Below you can see the photos at different speeds and what effect it has. Bear in mind you should also have a shutter fast enough to capture the helicopter pin sharp.

As you can see at 1/500 of a second shutter, the rotors are nearly still which makes the helicopter look weird. At 1/250 of a second less so but still bad enough to not make it pleasing. When we half that to 1/125 of a second it looks much more like the rotor is in motion and the photo gets action. And finally with 1/100 of a second we have a very good and sharp image with the rotors nice and blurry. Bear in mind you should always shoot at least 1.25 times your focal length in shutter speed to obtain a sharp image. So if we are shooting at 85mm you should technically shoot at least 1/25s of a second to ensure a sharp image. Once you have trained your focus tracking you can drop this as we have done to 1/100 of a second.

Now enjoy shooting some motion