I wanted to write this post to help you understand all that you need to know on shutter speed basics. So let's start with the most basic thing of all, what is shutter speed?
Shutter speed is simply the speed at which your camera takes a shot. Inside your camera, there is a shutter. Whenever you take a photo, the shutter opens and then closes. When it opens, light comes in the sensor, the sensor captures the picture, then the shutter closes. Faster shutter speeds are able to freeze the motion. Longer shutter speeds come in handy when we don't have enough light. If the shutter opens and closes quickly, not a lot of light will be able to come inside the camera. Your pictures could turn out under exposed depending on your light situation. You won't have such a problem on a sunny day for example if your shutter speed is 1/1000 of a second or 2/1000 of a second. This issue more commonly occurs indoors.
Imagine you are taking a photo of a sunset. If you select a very quick shutter speed, the photo will be dark. In this situation you would slow your shutter speed down. It may be a few seconds long. This depends on the lighting and also on the aperture value you have picked. By doing this, you will avoid the issue of your photos being under exposed and too dark, but another problem arises; you will need to use a tripod to keep the camera still. If you hand moves even a slight amount while you are taking the picture, or the subject moves, your picture will be blurry. Alternatively you can place the camera in a position where it will be totally still.
When you have an abundance of light, is it still possible to produce some nice effects by reducing the shutter speed?
Of course this is possible! An example is when you take a photo of moving water, like a river or a waterfall. This approach will create a silky, dreamy effect on the picture of the water. You should to adjust your aperture to compensate for the abundance of light entering your camera. Some effects require us to adjust the aperture enough that the shutter speed can be as slow as two minutes! You might need an aperture number of about F18 or F22. This means that the aperture size will shrink so that there is less light coming in. It might still be over exposed and you might need to use a filter to block out some of the light.
This technique can also be used on a bridge in an urban environment to take pictures of roads with moving vehicles on, to make the vehicles disappear so that the only thing you can see is that beautiful streak of their front and back lights.
Understanding Shutter Speed Basics
To adjust the shutter speed on your camera, you will need to locate the shutter speed dial. When you increase the shutter speed, you will see the F number decreasing. This happens because as you increase the shutter speed, less light is coming in, so the camera picks up a smaller F number, and as a result the aperture opens up to get more light in. It is a good idea to experiment with taking some images at different shutter speeds. If you set the shutter speed as one or two seconds, you will easily be able to hear the shutter before closing one or two seconds later.
With slower shutter speeds, it works best if you put your camera on a timer, so that your pushing of the button to take the picture won't make the camera shake slightly, even when it is on a tripod. Another tip is to carefully roll your finger off the button when you take the picture with the timer, so the camera isn't subjected to any small unexpected movements.
If you want a sharp picture of any moving subject, such as water or children (who often move around in unexpected ways), it would be best to use a fast shutter speed. 1/1000 of a second is a nice and fast shutter speed, but you sometimes don't need to use such a quick speed.
For night time long exposure, we will examine this in another post.
I hope you found this article on shutter speed basics to be valuable and that it helped you to understand the main concepts of the topic.
Shutter speed is simply the speed at which your camera takes a shot. Inside your camera, there is a shutter. Whenever you take a photo, the shutter opens and then closes. When it opens, light comes in the sensor, the sensor captures the picture, then the shutter closes. Faster shutter speeds are able to freeze the motion. Longer shutter speeds come in handy when we don't have enough light. If the shutter opens and closes quickly, not a lot of light will be able to come inside the camera. Your pictures could turn out under exposed depending on your light situation. You won't have such a problem on a sunny day for example if your shutter speed is 1/1000 of a second or 2/1000 of a second. This issue more commonly occurs indoors.
Imagine you are taking a photo of a sunset. If you select a very quick shutter speed, the photo will be dark. In this situation you would slow your shutter speed down. It may be a few seconds long. This depends on the lighting and also on the aperture value you have picked. By doing this, you will avoid the issue of your photos being under exposed and too dark, but another problem arises; you will need to use a tripod to keep the camera still. If you hand moves even a slight amount while you are taking the picture, or the subject moves, your picture will be blurry. Alternatively you can place the camera in a position where it will be totally still.
When you have an abundance of light, is it still possible to produce some nice effects by reducing the shutter speed?
Of course this is possible! An example is when you take a photo of moving water, like a river or a waterfall. This approach will create a silky, dreamy effect on the picture of the water. You should to adjust your aperture to compensate for the abundance of light entering your camera. Some effects require us to adjust the aperture enough that the shutter speed can be as slow as two minutes! You might need an aperture number of about F18 or F22. This means that the aperture size will shrink so that there is less light coming in. It might still be over exposed and you might need to use a filter to block out some of the light.
This technique can also be used on a bridge in an urban environment to take pictures of roads with moving vehicles on, to make the vehicles disappear so that the only thing you can see is that beautiful streak of their front and back lights.
Understanding Shutter Speed Basics
To adjust the shutter speed on your camera, you will need to locate the shutter speed dial. When you increase the shutter speed, you will see the F number decreasing. This happens because as you increase the shutter speed, less light is coming in, so the camera picks up a smaller F number, and as a result the aperture opens up to get more light in. It is a good idea to experiment with taking some images at different shutter speeds. If you set the shutter speed as one or two seconds, you will easily be able to hear the shutter before closing one or two seconds later.
With slower shutter speeds, it works best if you put your camera on a timer, so that your pushing of the button to take the picture won't make the camera shake slightly, even when it is on a tripod. Another tip is to carefully roll your finger off the button when you take the picture with the timer, so the camera isn't subjected to any small unexpected movements.
If you want a sharp picture of any moving subject, such as water or children (who often move around in unexpected ways), it would be best to use a fast shutter speed. 1/1000 of a second is a nice and fast shutter speed, but you sometimes don't need to use such a quick speed.
For night time long exposure, we will examine this in another post.
I hope you found this article on shutter speed basics to be valuable and that it helped you to understand the main concepts of the topic.
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Now that you've gained a good level of understanding about the basics of shutter speed you may want to have a look at some other great tutorials to help you improve your skills as a budding photographer
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