Fun with Shutter Speed

Yesterday, I began this series with an explanation of aperture. I admit, it's not the easiest concept to explain, but applying it in practice is fairly straightforward. Shutter speed, however, is the opposite - easy to explain, a little more difficult to apply. What do I mean by that?

Well, let's start with what it is, and some examples. A technical definition is "the effective length of time a camera's shutter is open". It's expressed in seconds or fractions of a second.

Sounds reasonable. How do we apply this? I'll explain a few scenarios:

1) Fast shutter speed for definition and freezing moving objects (faster than 1/250 to 1/4000 and beyond):



This shutter speed (taken with a point-and-shoot) is 1/1000. If you look closely, the waves are highly defined - they're not blurred. It looks as though I froze time (or something like that). You would also use a similar speed for sports events or any situation where things are moving quickly and you want to capture everything.

2) Slow shutter speed for dramatic effect/strategic blurring (more than one second):



This is a 30 second shutter speed. The clouds and the reflections are very dramatic. At a faster shutter speed, the picture would have been frozen - like this:



The shutter speed here was a fraction of a second, so everything looks more crisp.

But wait, it gets more confusing:

3) On the slow side - better for low light (1/15 and slower):



It was dark out, and I was using my macro lens. I chose a setting of 1/15 to compensate for the low light. As I have mentioned in the past, I kept the ISO relatively high as well to avoid blurring.

4) On the fast side - good light for sharp landscape shots (1/80 to around 1/125):



I used 1/80. The light was good, and the detail is good, too.

And now, for the most confusing part:

Aperture and shutter speed are related to each other. If you select the wrong shutter speed, you can under- or over-expose your photos. I can only be so technical, so instead of addressing this manually (using the M setting), I decide what I want to control - one or the other - and I set my camera according to that. The camera adjusts based on my selection. This link provides a more technical treatment of the topic, but the best advice is:

1) Shoot with different settings to see for yourself, keeping the above guidelines in mind

or

2) Decide what you want to capture and how - and modify that setting. (lots of detail, fast shutter speed or high f-stop - blurring, low f-stop or slow speed, etc.) Use the above pictures as a general guide.

I'm in favor of 1), as it's really the best way to see this in action. Plus, multiple versions of the same shot can be equally interesting.

Tomorrow, I'll throw in another variable - ISO.

Till tomorrow!