What’s that Wednesday today is focusing on shutter speeds. As I mentioned in my previous post in order to use your DSLR to it’s full advantage you really need to shoot in manual mode. And in order to do that you must understand how to get proper exposure of your images. Last week we talked about aperture and how it relates to exposure. So now that you understand that, we can talk about shutter speed.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:
In still cameras, the term shutter speed represents the time that the shutter remains open when taking a photograph.

In addition to its effect on exposure, the shutter speed changes the way movement appears in the picture. Very short shutter speeds can be used to freeze fast-moving subjects, for example at sporting events. Very long shutter speeds are used to intentionally blur a moving subject for artistic effect.[1] Short exposure times are sometimes called “fast”, and long exposure times “slow”.

A couple side notes, when you are controlling your shutter speed manually you will need to decrease your shutter speed to increase your exposure time. I know backwards again, right? Basically a shutter speed of 1/60 will leave the camera aperture open for 1/60th of a second and so on and so on. Confused? Try messing around with your settings and you’ll see what I mean.

The other thing, like mentioned above is when you are controlling your shutter speeds you can essentially freeze motion or intentionally blur motion. (So if you are chasing toddlers, raise those shutter speeds or they will look like great big blurry messes! LOL!) Also note until you get good at hand holding a very heavy camera and lens, (depending on your combo of choice) you shouldn’t try and hand hold low shutters speeds. If you find you absolutely must use a low shutter speed you should use a tripod. A good rule of thumb, is your shutter speed should be at least double the length of your lens. (i.e. if you are shooting with a 50mm lens your shutter speed should be at least 1/100)

Hopefully I haven’t left your head spinning too much! LOL! My goal is just to try and teach you some basics so you can use your camera in manual mode. Like I mentioned before, go ahead and try things out. Try changing you shutter speed and aperture and see what you get for results. The more you practice the more it will start to make sense. At least, that’s how it worked for me. But then I am totally a hands on learner. Next week we will talk about ISO and it’s effect on exposure So stay tuned!