HOW TO OPERATION A CAMERA – PART 2: SHUTTER SPEED

Alongside with ISO and Aperture, Shutter Speed is one of the most important setting in photography. It affects the brightness of a photo and creates dramatic effects by freezing or blurring motion. In the following article, I will explain everything you need to know about shutter speed in a very simple way.

What is Shutter speed?

Shutter speed indicates the camera open and close speed to control the amount of time light can get into the censor.

With different shutter speeds, the exposure time of the camera will be different or it also means that the shutter speed will affect the amount of light that reaches the censor which lead to the changing in the brightness of the photo.

Shutter speed not only affects the brightness of the image, but also affects the clarity of the object in the frame. Any objects or movements that appear in the frame while the shutter is open, will be recorded.

How to set up the Shutter speed?

“When the shutter is open for longer, anything moves in the frame during that time will be more blurred," photographer, writer, and teacher Ben Long says of camera shake.

When photographing fast-moving subjects such as athletes, car, train, etc... use fast shutter speed can help you eliminate motion to have sharpen photos.

For me, I usually go with 1/250 second or faster to get sharp freeze motions.

In this photo I used the technique: The subject and the camera are still, the surrounding objects are moving, (Doeffinger, 2009).

However, sometimes I choose to use the camera at a slow shutter speed to capture dramatic moment. As you can see in this picture, with shutter speed at 1/22s, I was able to captured the entire movement of the person getting off the train as blur motion while the main objects are still stationary. This gave the photo a sense of hustle during the rush-hour.

Finding out for more about how to operate a digital camera here!

Reference:

1. Doeffinger, D. (2009) Creative shutter speed master your camera's most powerful control. 1st edition. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.

2. Davidson, C., Ingersoll, S., Carlson, J., Goellner, A. and Ingersoll, S., n.d. Understanding shutter speed, both slow and fast. [online] Adobe. Available at: <https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/photography/discover/shutter-speed.html> [Accessed 8 July 2022].