Photo tips: More about shutter speed

Hello readers! Almost a month ago I posted a photo tips about light. That post involved three key things to the right lighting: aperture, shutter speed and ISO speed. In that post I was very short and just went over the basic facts that is needed to be able to change the lighting in your photos. Now I wanted to go back and add some information, this time about the shutter speed. I also want you to know that on all of the example photos the only thing I've changed is the shutter speed, no ISO speed, nothing. All photos are also unedited except for me putting the logo on.

Previous tips:
Photo tips: light - aperture, shutter speed and ISO speed
Photo tips: White balance (WB)

What is shutter speed?

I got over this pretty good in the previous post but in case you haven't read it I'm just going to tell you shortly but I really recommend you reading the previous post if you want to know more.

Shutter speed is how long you shutter is open. An example of how it's measured could be something like this: 1/30 (one thirtieth of a second), 1/100 (one hundredth of a second), 1/400 (one hundredth of a second). A high number like 1/1000 freezes the photo fast and gives you a sharp photo of something moving. The slower something moves, the lower shutter speed you need in order to get it sharp. Anything below 1/60 probably will get a slight blur if you don't use a stative of some kind. When your shutter is open longer it lets in more light and you photo will get lighter.

Shutter speed double

In most cases your shutter speed will most likely double when you choose a higher number. That means that the amount of light you photo gets also doubles. It is not exactly doubling but it's very close so don't think too much about numbers like 1/125 coming after 1/60. For example: 1/30, 1/60, 1/125, 1/500.

If you look at the example photos below you will probably notice that they both are pretty grainy. That is because of the high shutter speed I used. Nothing was moving in this photo, so there was no reason for me to have a high shutter speed but I wanted to show a good example.

1/2500

1/1000

1/400

1/800

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To freeze or not?

When you look at a moving motive you have the choice to freeze it or not. Water is something that could look very good when it isn't completly sharp because that gives you the ability to see the movement of the water. The same thing goes for a busy street where it might be nice to see the people move. On the other hand you might want to freeze a player at a sport event or something like that.

Something you have to have in mind is that if you are going to take photos in an area with bad lighting you might need to use flash or lamps if you want to use a high shutter or it might turn out very dark. The same goes for the opposite, maybe the lowers shutter speed isn't good in sharp sunlight because your photo might turn out overexposed.

If you look at my photos below you can see that there are more raindrops in the photo with the higher shutter speed. This is because in the photo with the lower shutter speed all the smaller raindrops got blurry so the camera wasn't able to catch it. The 1/2500 photo is also slightly brighter.

1/4000

1/2500