This week’s blog is going to be the last installment of the basics when shooting in manual mode. Hopefully you’ll be able to put all the baby steps from the last few weeks together to feel confident enough not to shoot in automatic all the time.
Shutter speed refers to the amount of time that your shutter is open while making a picture. If it helps, most people know this as the “click” that your camera makes after you press the shutter release button.
Since cameras have been around, shutter speed has always been noted as a fraction (because believe it or not, except for shooting star trails, it only takes a fraction of a second to make a picture). Faster shutter speeds are noted by larger denominators (ie, 1/6400). Slower shutter speeds are noted by smaller denominators (ie, 1/10).
Tip: the minimum shutter speed you can shoot at without getting motion blur (or any kind of blur for that matter) is 1/60 of a second. If you want to shoot slower than that I would recommend using a tripod and a shutter release cable.
While we’re on the subject of shutter speeds and blur, what if you want to express your creativity by purposefully having blur? There are several ways to do that. You can:
- Shoot action shots on slower shutter speeds
- Shoot objects standing still while everything else is moving
- Pan your camera (this is when you follow a subject, say a car, with your camera at the same speed that your subject is going)
However, if you want to avoid blur in action shots all you have to do is use a shorter shutter speed, but not one so fast that the picture is too dark. A good example is in the picture below. The photographer wanted to freeze the action that was going on, so he/she used a faster shutter speed.
After all of this has been said, there is still one more thing you should know about when dealing with shutter speeds. What is it?–Light meters.
So what is this light meter? What’s it do? Basically the light meter in your camera tells you if the light is too bright (which will overexpose your picture if you don’t change it) or too dark (which will underexpose your picture if you don’t change it).
By adjusting your shutter speed and/or aperture you can correctly balance your light meter to zero. To even see where your light meter is you hold your shutter halfway down while looking through the viewfinder. You can also hit the “info” button on the back of your camera and that will bring it up as well.
If you’re still having trouble, below is a great video that shows you the differences in what shutter speed can do.
Balfour | Ohio Yearbooks 