This is the third in a series of posts I’m doing about photography. I’m approaching this as if I’m speaking to novices with no knowledge beyond pointing and shooting an automatic camera. In previous posts, I’ve covered composition and aperture/depth of field. This post is about shutter speed and the cool stuff you can do with it. If you don’t know what that means, don’t let it scare you. It’s actually very simple.

Part II: Cool Stuff w/Shutter Speed
There are two things that control how film is exposed in a camera. One is the shutter, and one is the lens aperture. The shutter is the thing that opens and closes, exposing the film to light. The aperture is an opening that controls how much light is let in when the shutter opens and closes. The aperture lets you do cool things like blur out the foreground or background of a photo. But what’s so great about shutter speed?

It’s pretty basic.
A fast shutter speed lets you freeze action in your photo. So if you’re shooting something that’s moving quickly, a fast shutter speed will capture it in stillness. A slow shutter speed will show it moving—it’ll be blurred.

Fast shutter speed:

Slow shutter speed:

When to use which.
Generally, a fast shutter speed can be used anytime, as long as there is enough light, or you have a good enough flash. The first photo above, with the dreadlocked singer, was taken in low light conditions with a fast shutter speed and a flash. The second photo above, with the blurred bassist, was taken in low light conditions with a slow shutter speed and a flash.

If you’re shooting in low light conditions and you don’t have or want to use a flash, then you’re going to have to use a slow shutter speed to allow enough light in to capture an image. This will mean anything moving in the picture will be blurred. And you must hold your camera very still (or use a tripod) or the movement of your camera will blur everything.

Below is a picture I took at dusk with a slow shutter speed.

A flash would not have worked in this setting. I braced the camera (or my arm holding it) against the railing of the pier and used a slow shutter speed. It gives the image an almost haunting, ghostlike feel, partly because the person walking on the left is blurry.

A common sort of picture to take with a slow shutter speed is a freeway or city scene at night. Here’s a picture I took of the 405 the other night:

The shutter was open for about 8-10 seconds for that shot.

Another common thing to do is to take a picture of something that is moving and pan your camera along with it, so the object that is moving is mostly in focus, and the background is blurred. Here’s one of my son riding his bike:

It can be hard to get the subject in focus. You have to time your panning of the camera right. The easiest way to do it is to start panning with the moving object before you release the shutter. So I aimed at my son before he was where I wanted him to be in the picture and followed him with the camera as he went by, only depressing the shutter about midway through my panning motion. I think the shutter speed was about 25 for that shot.

If you have a zoom lens (one you zoom manually by twisting the lens), you can create a cool effect using a slow shutter speed by zooming in or out while you are taking the picture. Here’s an example I took at a show (using a borrowed camera):

Fun at night with shutter speed.
If you have a tripod or something solid to set your camera on, and a small object that lights up, you can have a lot of fun at night with a slow shutter speed. These pictures were taken with my camera on a small tripod and the shutter speed at 15 seconds (the shutter stayed open for a full 15 seconds). My kids or I were “drawing” in the air by waving around a Nano iPod.

In the photo above, my daughter stood very still for the full 15 seconds, while I went behind her and drew the angel wings and halo with an iPod. The slight blur you see behind her is me moving around. I drew the wings as quickly as I could and then hopped out of frame so that I wouldn’t be seen in the final image.

In this next photo, I simply hid behind her, so you can see my arm and leg.

There are a lot of cool things you can do with a slow shutter speed, I’ve only posted a few ideas. Think about fire. Carnival rides at night. Flowing water. If you have any examples, feel free to post them in the comments.

So, how to set the shutter speed?
Some point and shoots don’t have shutter speed settings. But many do. If there is a setting on your camera labeled “S,” that stands for shutter speed. If you use that setting, the camera will place emphasis on your shutter speed setting (over the aperture setting).

Shutter speeds usually range from full seconds to fractions of a second. If your camera has a shutter speed of 1000 or 10000, that means 1/1000th or 1/10000th of a second. That’s fast. If you go down into the lower numbers, those are slower speeds. 250 would be 1/250th of a second. 2 would be 1/2 a second. On my camera, full seconds are indicated with a hash mark: 3″ means 3 full seconds.

Many cameras have a “B” setting, which stands for “Bulb,” and it means that as long as you have the button depressed on your camera, the shutter will stay open. (The term “bulb” is a legacy from the early days of photography, when you’d open the shutter, manually fire a flashbulb, and then allow the shutter to close.)

To capture the blur of movement, you will probably need to use a shutter speed of at least 15 or slower. (1/15th of a second.) The blurred bassist I posted above was probably shot with a shutter speed of about 8. (1/8th of a second.)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Tying shutter speed and aperture together.
Something to be aware of is that shutter speed and aperture affect each other. If you have a big wide aperture, you’re letting a lot of light in, which means in sunny conditions, the shutter speed will need to be fast, or the photo will be over-exposed. If you want to use a slow shutter speed in well-lit conditions, you’ll need a narrow aperture.

when shooting in dark conditions, chances are you’ll need both a wide aperture and a slow shutter speed. As you experiment with both settings, eventually you’ll be able to use a completely manual setting, where you set both the aperture and shutter speed yourself. Most cameras these days will tell you even on a manual setting if you’re over- or under-exposing a shot.

Helpful link:
This blog post has some great tips on holding your camera steady to reduce blur caused by camera movement when using a slow shutter speed.

Links to previous posts in this series:

Composition

Apeture and Depth of Field

Next up: Macro shots.