Shutter speed

Before I start talking about shutter speed, let me apologize for not updating the blog in a while. I was busy with a wedding and then got really busy at work. But lets get to it now.

We know that the mirror and the shutter snap up from in front of the sensor, exposing it to the subject to take a picture. Well the shutter can snap back in place very quickly or can stay up for a long time. The time it takes for the shutter to snap up and down again is referred to as shutter speed.

So what can you control with shutter speed? Motion. If you want to freeze motion, you would take pictures at a high shutter speed such as 1/1000th or 1/500th of a second. To show flow of motion, use slow shutter speeds such as 1/30th of a second or shutter speeds longer than a second. Most cameras can go from 1/4000th to a 30 second shutter speed. And most DSLRs also have a "Bulb" mode, which means that the camera will take the picture for as long as the shutter button is pressed. But try to use a tripod or a stable surface when using slow shutter speeds otherwise the entire picture will come out blurry due to shaky hands.

To demonstrate the results, I set my camera on a tripod and took pictures of moving traffic at different shutter speeds.

Taken at 1/500th of a second:

Taken at 1/100th of a second and you can clearly see that the cars in this picture are not as sharp as the car in the last one:

1/25th of a second:

1/10th of a second:

Just like one of the uses of the aperture is to determine how much light goes through the lens, shutter speed has the same use as well. The longer the shutter is open for the more light hits the sensor making your pictures brighter. So if you want to take pictures with long shutter speeds in day light, you will have to use a very small aperture value so your pictures do not come out too bright.

Put your camera in the shutter priority or shutter value mode (marked with an "S" or "Tv" on your camera dial) and experiment with different shutter speeds.

Next and hopefully very soon, I will talk about ISO control and tell you how you can use aperture, shutter speed and ISO to get the proper exposure but different results for your pictures.