getitdigital review: Shutter Speed-What it means to you.

This is part of the getitdigital review Tips and Tricks section that was created in order to assist our customers in taking better pictures:

When you switch the camera to manual mode, you will see that there are two settings that can be controlled in every camera. Those are Aperture and Shutter Speed. Why are they so important?

The easiest explanation is that both control the amount of light that hits the sensor and the light hitting the sensor is what creates the picture.  Therefore, if you control either one of these settings, you control the picture. In truth, in order to move from casual user to hobbyist or professional, you need to understand these two aspects of photography.

This post will be for the purpose of explaining shutter speed. For information on aperture, please refer to this post: getitdigital reviews: A quick lesson in Aperture.

Just to define shutter speed: The length of time that the camera shutter remains open, thereby allowing light to enter the camera and expose the photograph.

Now that we understand shutter speed, let’s take a look at how it can effect our photography.

It logically follows that when something is moving and you want to “freeze” it, the shutter speed should be faster. Since a smaller amount of light is reaching the sensor in a shorter amount of time, a smaller piece of time is recorded. When you use a slower shutter speed, you get something like the photo below.

A Faster shutter speed will yield the photo below:

Shutter speed is measured in seconds or parts of seconds of opening. Usually a shutter speed of 1/250 is enough to freeze water.

1/500 is enough to capture an athlete  or animal in motion. The idea is that the faster the subject is moving, the faster the shutter speed must be in order to avoid blurriness.

The thing to keep in mind is that when you increase the shutter speed, you reduce the amount of light hitting the sensor and if this is not compensated for properly, the picture will be very dark.

There are a number of ways to control this. The first is to open the aperture wider as when the lens is open wider, more light will be let in in a shorter amount of time. This is the reason that shutter speed and aperture are directly related. You must keep in mind that with this method is that the depth of field will be shorter so the background will seem blurry and only what is in the set depth of field will be in focus.

Another method to deal with less light entering the lens is to increase the sensor’s sensitivity which can be done by increasing the ISO settings. You can maintain your depth of field and still capture a well lighted image.

The major disadvantage of this is that with increased ISO sensitivity, the image appears grainer. This is especially important to keep in mind when  capturing images in dark settings.

Some cameras like the Canon EOS 7D and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II have advanced computer processors that eliminate much of the graininess found on other cameras, very well. A good rule of thumb is anything above 1600 ISO will be relatively grainy and is not suitable for enlargements as the noise will become distracting.

To summarize, in order to freeze action, you need to use a faster shutter speed. In order to compensate for less light being available for exposure, you need to adjust the aperture and ISO settings until you get the image just the way you’d like it. This all comes with experience and remember, the more you shoot, the more these concepts will be become second nature and the better photographer you will be.

Happy Shooting!

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