What is Shutter Speed

What is shutter speed, and how does it work well?

When you take your photo, your camera opens a shutter to allow light to hit the sensor and then closes that up, and the shutter speed controls how long to leave that shutter open.

For now, a dial on your camera usually controls this.

It’s slightly different from Brand to Brand, but there’ll be a dial that you can adjust to change the shutter speed.

It’s measured in time, so for example, 1 400th of a second, 1 800th of a second, one 160th of a second, and setting that to different lengths of time, including much longer like one second, two second 10 seconds, will affect how long that shutter is left open for.

Of course, the longer the shutter is open, the more light will be released to hit the sensor.

So it will result in a Brighter Image; that’s how shutter speed affects the exposure.

But it will also affect the look of the image with movement.

So a faster shutter speed, say 1 800th of a second, will freeze the action much better than, let’s say, one-tenth of a second. It won’t be nearly as bright.

One-tenth of a second will be a much Brighter Image, but 1 800th of a second will freeze things in place much better.

I will give you an example because it can be difficult to imagine without seeing it.

So, for example, this shot is taken at 1 800 a second, and you can see the movement of the water is frozen.

It is picked out at a moment; that’s how it was.

Let’s shoot that same image at one-tenth of a second.

You can see much more movement in the water; we’ve not frozen it in place, and we’ve got quite a bit more blur now.

This is one thing that many new photographers trip up on when it comes to sharpness.

A faster shutter speed will usually result in a sharper photo because it will get rid of any blur from movement in the photo.

1 400th of a second is always a pretty safe bet for human movement and then faster if you’ve got things like water or Sports wildlife animals, something like that that you want to freeze the motion of absolutely.

But you won’t always want to freeze that motion.

Sometimes, you wish to blur things out, and that’s where long exposure comes into effect with a longer shutter speed.

So let’s say 5 or 10 seconds.

It’s going to let a lot more light into that sensor, but it’s also going to smooth out and blur the movement of the water, which can make for some exciting photos.

It comes down to whether you want to freeze the motion or emphasize the movement.

The shutter speed allows you to control the look of the action in your photos while also affecting the exposure.

Using a faster shutter speed, resulting in a darker photo, you must get the exposure back from somewhere else.

And one of the ways you could do that is with an aperture.

So, if you use a faster shutter speed, you might want to use a wider open aperture to let more light in that way.

But that’s effectively the two things: shutter speed affects the exposure or the brightness of the photo and how the movement is portrayed.