Speed of the Shutter

Thank you for all of your comments on my photography tutorial posts so far. I consider myself an amateur at all of this, and there are still many things I don’t know, but at least I’ve been able to inspire some of you to start experimenting outside of the realms of automatic. Yay!

Now on to todays topic.

How did….

MiLK Studio capture this gorgeous photo Mrs. Blush in front of a moving subway car?

Kelly Moore isolate this bride, keeping her in focus and making the background blurry?

Anne Ruthmann capture this little boy flying through the air and keep him from looking blurry?

Jeff Newsom create these ribbons of light?

{Jeff Newsom}

The answer? All of these effects were achieved using different types of shutter speed manipulations.

What is shutter speed?

You know that little “click” sound you hear when you take a picture? That’s the shutter opening and closing. When you take a picture in a bright setting, the shutter clicks really fast. When you take a picture in a dark setting (without the flash) the shutter takes a lot longer to go make the clicking sound.

The shutter of your camera is like your eyelids, to give it a very basic explanation. When you are in a very bright place, you only need to keep your eyes open for a short period of time because the light is so bright, and you want to let less light in. When you are stumbling around in the dark, you keep your eyes open longer to let in more light. Shutter speed is the setting you manipulate on your camera to affect how long the shutter stays open.

Shutter speed is measured in parts of a second. It will usually be measured in numbers from something like 15″ (that’s 15 seconds) to 1/4000 (that is 1/4000th of a second). 15″ is a really really long exposure. 1/4000 is a really really fast exposure. Don’t let the numbers scare you. There are a lot of them, but the operate on a scale from largest to smallest, so one you understand what the fastest and shortest shutter speeds do you will be able to understand what the middle ones do as well! FYI, my camera displays 1/2000 as just “2000″ and 2″ as “0″2″.

To let more light into your camera (done in dark situations), you use a longer (aka slower) shutter speed. To let less light in your camera (done in bright situations), you use a shorter (aka faster) shutter speed.

Shutter Speed and Exposure

Have you heard the term exposure before? An overly exposed picture is very bright, and an under exposed picture is very dark. Shutter speeds affects the exposure of your picture.

The dwarf is back to show us what different shutter speed settings to do your photos!

I took this picture in automatic mode, and I actually think it’s a little bit underexposed, but it will do.

Shutter speed of 1/125

Think fast: Because the picture below is darker (underexposed), was my shutter speed too fast or too slow?

Shutter speed of 1/800

The picture below is overexposed. Was my shutter speed too fast or too slow?

Shutter speed of 1/20

Shutter Speed and Motion

The reason why shutter speed can be so tricky is that it’s not only related to exposure, but also to movement. I’ve had several emails asking me about why picture turn out blurry. Some of you have asked me “Do I need to change my ISO?” Nope, changing your ISO won’t affect how blurry your photos are at all, sharper pictures are going to be achieved by changing the shutter speed.

I took some silly photos of myself twirling in one of my favorite skirts to help you see how changing the shutter speed will give you a different look in your photos.

Shutter speed of 1/800

1/800 is a fast shutter speed, which means the shutter wasn’t open for very long. You can see by my skirt and hair that I’m twirling in a circle, but I’m not blurry because the shutter speed was short enough to essentially freeze me in time.

Shutter speed of 1/20

By taking my shutter speed down to 1/20th of a second, I was able to capture some of the movement in my twirl, most of which you can see in my skirt.

Shutter speed of 1/3

1/3 of a second isn’t an extremely long shutter speed, but it is slow enough to make me look like a nice pretty blur. In each of these photos I was (trying) to twirl at the exact same speed, so it wasn’t me affecting the blurriness, it was the shutter speed of the camera.

I’m loving this chart I found on Flickr. Below you an see how she used a small spinning toy to illustrate how faster and shorter shutter speeds affect the way his moving arms look in the photo.

At a recent engagement shoot I had a little bit of fun experimenting with shutter speeds. This is straight out of the camera, and I did it by using a shorter shutter speed and asking him to run and her to stand very still.

This post is all over the place, but hopefully it is helping a few of you. I found this really great chart at Digicamhelp.com to help you understand what shutter speed you might want to use in different situations you might encounter.

I thought it might be good to point out that really cool photos like the two below (by Kelli Nicole and Natalie Moser) are not done using shutter speed. Effects such as these are achieved using a program like Photoshop. I’ll teach you how to make your own sometime soon!

If you want to look at some really amazing photos that show the results of different techniques that use shutter speed manipulation, visit this link.

After getting through all of that information are you ready to start practicing? You are in luck! Your camera likely has a special setting called Shutter Speed Priority which will let you change the shutter speed to different settings, and the camera will do the rest of the work! This way you can practice learning to use movement without worrying about aperture or ISO.

On the left side of this photo you can see a small wheel that says things like “User”, “P”, “SV”, “TV”, etc. Your camera should have a similar wheel. If you would like to use your camera on Shutter Speed Priority you need to turn this wheel to TV. Then you need to go get your manual and figure out which buttons to push or scroll to change the shutter speed from there. :)

{Photoaxe}

Please note that sometimes it is just too bright or too dark to take a photo at a certain shutter speed. So turning it to shutter speed priority isn’t going to give you amazing photos no matter what. Your camera isn’t magic!

Have fun practicing!  Next week, in the last of my photography series, we’ll talk about aperture!