The Fast Guide to Shutter Speed
Being able to properly set your shutter speed is one of the most useful abilities any photographer can have. This means getting good sports or movement shots, working with low or high lighting situations and sometimes even adding those little touches to make photographs pop, such as this beautiful Creek waterfall taken by Douglas Otto
Photo of the week by Douglas Otto
In this picture the frothy look that the water has, that almost fools your eyes into thinking it’s moving, is an example of the effects of proper shutter speed usage.
WHAT IS SHUTTER SPEED
If you are a beginner you might not know exactly what a shutter is, let alone why or how to adjust its speed. A shutter allows light to pass through it for a limited amount of time. This allows the light to make contact with the sensor in modern digital cameras or the photosensitive film in older ones.
HOW TO USE A SHUTTER SPEED
The faster the shutter speed is the less time light has to hit the sensor. This means that less time is actually recorded n the photograph. For fast moving pictures a has shutter speed will leave less blur, but sometimes a blur is wanted such as in the featured picture this week. The water in Doug’s picture is seen trickling down the creek with a lengthened shutter speed. This shutter speed blurs the water giving it that slight frothy look, and the slight illusion of movement.
Longer shutter speeds are used to create blur or paint with light. Shorter shutter speeds are used for fast moving photography such as sport photography, and sometimes nature photography. It’s also true that the Shutter speeds can be dependent on the focal length of the lens for hand held photography. It’s said that the focal length in milliliters times 1/100 of a second should give you a good shutter speed for using that particular focal length. For example a 50 mm lens being hand held should have a focal length that stays open no longer than 1/50 of a second. A 500 millimeter focal length lens shouldn’t have a shutter speed more than 1/500th of a second if it’s being hand held. This will help prevent camera blur.
A LIST OF SHUTTER SPEED USES
Keep in mind that these rules may conflict slightly with the rule I just gave you. It may be slightly easier to control the camera blur when panning of you may want to sue a tripod
1/4000th of a second: This shutter speed is good for freezing a fast moving objects in the moment. It’s good for splashes, minor explosions fast projectiles. Anything moving FAST.
1/2000th of a second: This is a great speed for getting pictures of flying birds, especially fast moving ones.
1/1000th of a second: this is good for moving vehicles at high speeds. Now keep in mind that this is good for freezing the vehicle, which will not show the speed.
1/500th of a second: This speed is good for sports pictures. Anything that involves running jumping or riding will be able to be shot with this speed.
1/250th of a second: This is good for shooting moving objects that are going rather slow. People who are walking and
1/125th of a second: This speed is also good for fast moving vehicles however there is an entirely different dynamic here. You should practice panning to get a blurry background but a clear picture this will show speed.
1/60th of a second: this is good for panning for human powered vehicles such as bikes that are close to the photographer, again you should use this if you want to show movement and pan to blur the background.
1/30th of a second: This is useful for shooting human powered vehicles at a distance. Again this is useful for panning and getting background blur.
½ of a second: this is the speed that Doug most likely used to snap his picture. However, depending on the speed of the water, and the exact effect that you want you may go up to one second for this effect.