How did….

I capture these four people spelling out the word love using sparklers?

I freeze this baby as she flew in the air while her parents smiled up at her?

I freeze the mom while emphasizing the movement of her kids?

I make this couple look like movie stars as the subway flew past them and their hair whipped around rather glamorously?

The answer? All of these effects were achieved using different types of shutter speed manipulations.

What is shutter speed?

You know that little “click” sound you hear when you take a picture? That’s the shutter opening and closing. When you take a picture in a bright setting, the shutter clicks really fast. When you take a picture in a dark setting (without the flash) the shutter takes a lot longer to go make the clicking sound.

The shutter of your camera is like your eyelids, to give it a very basic explanation. When you are in a very bright place, you only need to keep your eyes open for a short period of time because the light is so bright, and you want to let less light in. When you are stumbling around in the dark, you keep your eyes open longer to let in more light. Shutter speed is the setting you manipulate on your camera to affect how long the shutter stays open.

Shutter speed is measured in parts of a second. It will usually be measured in numbers from something like 15″ (that’s 15 seconds) to 1/4000 (that is 1/4000th of a second). 15″ is a really really long exposure. 1/4000 is a really really fast exposure. Don’t let the numbers scare you. There are a lot of them, but the operate on a scale from largest to smallest, so one you understand what the fastest and shortest shutter speeds do you will be able to understand what the middle ones do as well! FYI, my camera displays 1/2000 as just “2000″ and 2″ as “0″2″.

To let more light into your camera (done in dark situations), you use a longer (aka slower) shutter speed. To let less light in your camera (done in bright situations), you use a shorter (aka faster) shutter speed.

A good rule of thumb to use is to make sure that your shutter speed number is bigger than the focal length of your lens. When I’m using a 50mm lens, I try not to shoot with a shutter speed slower than 1/80. If I have my 135mm lens on my camera, I try to keep it at 1/200 if I can.

Shutter Speed and Exposure

Have you heard the term exposure before? An overly exposed picture is very bright, and an under exposed picture is very dark. Shutter speeds affects the exposure of your picture. Both of these pictures are straight out of camera.

This one is over exposed. Too bright!

This one is under exposed. Too dark!

Shutter Speed and Motion

The reason why shutter speed can be so tricky is that it’s not only related to exposure, but also to movement. I’ve had several emails asking me about why picture turn out blurry. Some of you have asked me “Do I need to change my ISO?” Nope, changing your ISO won’t affect how blurry your photos are at all, sharper pictures are going to be achieved by changing the shutter speed.

At my friend’s wedding, the area where she got dressed was very dark and I had to work quickly to find the right settings to capture her getting into her dress. For this moment, I did not choose well, as you can see my shutter speed was too slow to freezer her MOH’s hand. The hand is blurry (and the bride isn’t very sharp either). My shutter speed for this image was 1/100.

For this funny moment later int he day, I was better prepared. As the bride dipped back for a kiss, her veil started to fall. She stood up and tried to catch it, but wasn’t fast enough. Because my shutter speed was fast 1/1600 sec, I was able to freeze the veil as well as the couple as they reacted to the moment.

I decided to use a little toy that my son loves to play with to show how shutter speeds can freeze or emphasize motion.

Shutter speed of 1/250

1/250 is a relatively fast shutter speed, which means the shutter wasn’t open for very long. Although my son is reaching out and petting his dog toy, his hand is frozen in mid-air. If he had been running around in circles and I wanted to freeze him in action, I’d want to choose something more like 1/800, or 1/2000. (Your meter will help you determine the correct one.)

Shutter speed of 1/15

When my shutter speed goes down to 1/15th of a second, my son starts to blur and you can see why this toy is so fun. When you push on the back, the tail wags back and forth!

Shutter speed of .4 sec

This shutter speed is really slow, and difficult to use without a tripod. As you can see, when my shutter is open this long, items in motion are blurry and will sometimes have trails behind them.

What jumping up and down on the couch with a shutter speed of .4 sec looks like. If I wanted to get him jumping in the couch with a nice big smile on his face that you could see clearly, I would have chosen a shutter speed more like 1/800.

I found this really great chart at Digicamhelp.com to help you understand what shutter speed you might want to use in different situations you might encounter.

SUGGESTED SHUTTER SPEEDS
TO FREEZE ACTION*	TO CAPTURE MOTION**
Children - 1/250 - 1/1000 seconds	Amusement park rides: +/- one second
Moving water/waterfalls: 1/1000 seconds or more	Moving water/waterfalls: 4 or more seconds
Sporting event: 1/500 - 1/2000 seconds	Fireworks: 1/2 - 4 seconds
Birds in flight: 1/1000th a second and above	Moving cars at night: 8-10 seconds
	Night photography - one or more seconds

I thought it might be good to point out that really cool photos like the one below Natalie Moser are not done using shutter speed. Effects such as these are achieved using a program like Photoshop.

If you want to look at some really amazing photos that show the results of different techniques that use shutter speed manipulation, visit this link.

After getting through all of that information are you ready to start practicing? You are in luck! Your camera likely has a special setting called Shutter Speed Priority which will let you change the shutter speed to different settings, and the camera will do the rest of the work! This way you can practice learning to use movement without worrying about aperture or ISO.

On the left side of this photo you can see a small wheel that says things like “User”, “P”, “SV”, “TV”, etc. Your camera should have a similar wheel. If you would like to use your camera on Shutter Speed Priority you need to turn this wheel to TV. Then you need to go get your manual and figure out which buttons to push or scroll to change the shutter speed from there.

Please note that sometimes it is just too bright or too dark to take a photo at a certain shutter speed. So turning it to shutter speed priority isn’t going to give you amazing photos no matter what. Your camera isn’t magic!

Have fun practicing!