Photo 101: Shutter Speed
by Joe
Shutter Speed is usually how photographers refer to exposure time. A photographer uses a combination of shutter speed and aperture to attain the a correct exposure. Depending on the available light and aperture the shutter speed may need to be adjusted. The shutter speed is always measured in seconds or fractions of a second.
How can shutter speed affect a photo?
The shutter allows the light in to expose the film or sensor to what you’re capturing. So, the faster the shutter the less light is able to enter the camera and viceversa. Imagine you’re taking a photo at night, do you think you need a faster or slower shutter speed to capture the image? If you said slower, you are correct! Give yourself a high five. Check out this image:
The photo above is of the ‘Iolani Palace in Honolulu, HI. I took this photo at night. The reason it came out so clear, without flash, and at night is because this photo has a 20 second exposure. Yup, took 20 seconds to actually capture this image. I used a tripod to make sure that the camera didn’t move, if any movement occurred the photo would actually be blurry. If you notice the trees are a bit blurry and that is because it was breezy that night.
Have you ever taken a photo and it came out blurry? The reason is because your shutter speed was not fast enough so you were not able to effectively capture the motion.
You can use a slower shutter speed during the day by closing down your aperture and limiting the amount of light that enters the lens. That’s how you can attain this effect:
Above I closed the aperture and slowed the shutter speed down but followed the moving car leaving it clear.
Try to imagine light as paint and your camera sensor as a blank canvas. As light hits the sensor your picture is being painted. At night, you have to let your canvas hang around longer to allow the paint (light) to trickle in and paint the image.
There are some tricks you can do with your photos by adjusting the shutter speed. One of those is introducing the sense of motion into your photos.
For instance, have you ever seen a photo if a waterfall where the water seems to be flowing? Here’s an example -
How the photographer attains a water flow is by slowing down the shutter speed. How I was able to do that despite it being the middle of the day is another lesson but it is achieved by slowing the shutter down.
Here’s another example of slowing down your shutter speed to give a sense of motion -
Some photos take even longer to capture which result in a motion that sometimes we don’t think of -
Hope that all makes sense, if you have questions feel free to comment or email us. I think we will go ahead and tackle aperture next week.
Tags: Shutter, Shutter Speed
