Introduction & Complete Guide to Shutter Speed in Photography

If you are thinking of learning photography then you must know its pillars. Among the three important pillars, Shutter speed is mainly responsible for creating dramatic effects, freezing action and blurring the motion. Whereas, other two pillars such as ISO and Aperture has their own specific uses & effects.

Before we get into the details of Shutter Speed in photography, here are the few things that we will cover in this guide.

• What is Shutter Speed?
• How to measure Shutter Speed?
• The basics of Shutter Speed and Exposure
• Fast, Slow and Long Shutter Speeds
• How to set Shutter Speed?

So, what is Shutter Speed?

Hold on, we will come on that but before that, you need to know what is the camera shutter?

Camera Shutter is generally the thick curtain in front of the camera sensor that is released after pressing the shoot button or shutter button. During the time of shutter, the digital sensor is exposed to light and closed immediately stopping the light from hitting the sensor.

What is Shutter Speed?

You know what camera shutter is right? They have great relationship between each other.

Camera shutter triggers the curtain to open and close, while Shutter speed is simply the length of time the shutter is open and is exposed to the light. In other words, shutter speed is how long your camera spends taking a photo.

Shutter speed is important in many ways. The shutter speed is basically used to blur the motion. While the motion effects is all determined by how long you expose your sensor to the lights. The perfect example of shutter speed & motion blur would the pictures used quite often in advertisements of cars and motorbikes.

Have you ever come across the beautiful images of Milky Way galaxy? Or the shining stars shrilling all around the sky?

Well, that's the photo taken using the slow shutter speed. Amazing right?

What if I tell you, you can not only capture the motion but also freeze the motion with shutter speed?

Shutter speed is simply amazing and you can do many things using shutter speed. Yes, just like the slow shutter speed creates the motion picture, the fast shutter speed setting can freeze the object and eliminate motion from the image.

Look at all the water splash freezing right in the air. It’s a jaw-dropping right?

To sum up the shutter speed, it is the length of time that is exposed to the lights. Whereas, fast shutter speed freezes the on-going action, while long shutter speeds give the motion effect to the object.

How to measure Shutter Speed?

So, how do you know the shutter speed and how do you measure it?

Generally, it is measured on the fraction of a second. For instance, 1 /4 is a quarter of a second, while 1/250 means one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second or simply four milliseconds.

Wow, that looks tough, right? But my friend we are measuring the speed of seconds, so we have to go to milliseconds.

The modern days' camera followed by mirrorless cameras has the power to handle the speeds of up to 1/4000^th of a second. Whereas the big and expensive cameras have almost double speed i.e. 1/8000^th.

Meanwhile, the longest available shutter speed on modern camera and mirrorless cameras is 30 seconds. You can use the external gears such as a tripod or remote triggers to use the long shutter speed.

The basics of Shutter Speed and Exposure

Shutter speed is not only used to create motion or freeze moment, but it is also used to adjust the brightness on the image.

Shutter speed is the time exposed on the lights, so the amount of brightness depends upon the use of long and fast shutter speed.

If you are using a long exposure shot, then it's definite that your camera sensor gathers a lot of light. Whereas, the fast shutter speed captures only the small fraction of light into the sensor and gives the low brightness photos.

However, Shutter Speed is not the only one who determines the amount of light in photography. There are Aperture and ISO as well, these both factors affect the brightness on the image on the basis of its surroundings.

Surroundings and situation is important in photography. It determines the level of exposure and brightness in your photos. You may not want to go for long shutter speed on a bright sunny day, as it captures lots of lights and results brighter image.

Similarly, you may go for fast shutter speed during night photography. The long exposed photos result into dark image.

Fast, Slow and Long Shutter Speeds

Before using the fast, slow and long shutter speeds, you need to learn where to use which shutter speeds?

Generally, Fast shutter speed is used to freeze action. That means you are trying to photographs the fast moving object. It may be simply a bird or fastest animal of the world, Cheetah. For that, you may need to set the fast shutter speed to 1/1000^th second or faster.

Likewise, for a slow-moving object, you may set your setting to 1/200^th second, 1/100^th second or even longer. However, 1/100^th seconds to 1 second is still relatively slow. It's hard to capture the moment without introducing the shake.

Now, the shake is all depended upon your camera lenses. Some high-end cameras have vibration reduction technologies that helps to get the sharp images without introducing the camera shake. If your lenses don't have this technology, then it's better to use tripod or in the worst case, learn how to handle your camera properly.

Note that, long shutter speed usually is above 1 second. If you are going above 1 second then it's better to use a tripod or supporting gears to get the sharp and detail image. Mostly, long shutter speed is used to capture the beautiful low-light/night photography or simply to capture movement.

How to set shutter speed?

Now you know what shutter speed is, are you ready to try it on your camera?

Let's do it.

You can use the shutter speed setting by two ways. The first one would be to put the camera settings into Shutter Priority mode.

In this setting, you just have to put the desired shutter speed, whereas it will take the other settings automatically i.e. Aperture and ISO.

The second way to use shutter speed is by putting your camera into "Manual" mode. In this shutter speed setting, you have to set the shutter speed and other settings like Aperture and ISO manually.

So, how do you find the Shutter speed in your camera?

Unlike other settings like Aperture and ISO, Shutter speed is indicated in the plain number. When the shutter speed is longer than 1 second then it is indicated as something like 1" or 5" followed by the quotation signs.

It's simple right?

Well, we have almost cover all the aspect of Shutter Speed. If you have any confusion regarding the shutter speed, feel free to contact us or write to us.

We would be happy to assist you in any possible manner. Till then, be experimental with your camera. Go for long, fast and slow shutter speed. See other's work and try to copy that, just keep on clicking. After all, practice makes man perfect.