Shutter Speed Tutorial

If you want to photograph manually and therefore improve your photography skills, you must understand what Shutter Speed is.

There is a sensor/film in your camera. With shutter speed, we basically say how long does the sensor/film see the light. It can be very short or very long; continue reading to see what is the difference and when to use each.

1. Settings Examples

1/1000

1/500

1/250

1/125

1/60

1/30

1/15

1/8

1/4

1/2

1s or 1"

1/1000 is the fastest on the list, so our sensor captures everything that happened in 1/1000 of a second (which is pretty fast). 1s lasts for a whole second and it captures a lot more light than 1/1000. Remember, these are not all speeds; there are faster and slower ones too.

2. When to use certain speeds

When photographing sports, wildlife or fast things, we want fast shutter speeds and for that we need a lot of light. We use 1/250 and faster (1/500, 1/1000 etc.) when shooting this. If we use slower ones, our subject may become blurred and that is something we do not want

Slower shutter speeds are used at low light, night photography and when creating interesting effects. These times are usually 1/60 and slower (1/30, 1/15 etc.). Some people use shutter speeds of seconds, minutes or even hours when photographing at night (stars). For that, you need a Cable Release

To understand this, you need to practice and look at some examples. Automatic mode does not know what you want; only you do.