The Shutter Speed on Your Camera

The shutter speed is simply the length of time that the light hits the film or sensor allowing the image to be recorded. Each variation in speed (much the same as the aperture variations) is known as a stop.

You can get really creative with varying shutter speeds as we shall see in a moment. However, there is one important factor that you should always remember. As mentioned in the Aperture chapter, whenever you adjust the speed of the shutter up or down, you must compensate in some other way. This is normally done via the aperture but you can also do it via the ISO setting. Or use of filters.

As you are letting in less light with a faster shutter speed, you need to compensate and allow more light in via either:

Your style of photography and what you wish to photograph play the biggest determining factor in what shutter speeds used. If you haven’t read it already, the following page at All Things Photography explains a bit more: Shutter Speeds at All things Photography.

If you are a keen sports or wildlife photographer, you will inevitably be using a fast shutter speed much of the time. But what about those times when it just isn’t possible?

For example, have you ever paid close attention to the crowd during a big football match at night? Have you seen the hundreds of flash guns going off from people in the crowd? People who are much too far away for the flash to actually do any good, making fast shutter speeds redundant.

More often than not the images will be underexposed or have serious camera shake. This is due to long exposures or slow shutter speeds, giving blurred pictures.

The main reason for this is that they are probably using fully automatic cameras. These tend to recognise the failing light and try to compensate with a slower shutter speed. They may also add full power flash, albeit without success.

What if you are trying to capture a wild animal, (again out of reach of the flash) in the early morning. At a time when the sun is barely up and the camera just won’t allow a fast enough shutter?

Note: In the days before digital, "pushing" a film was the term used when you underexposed an entire film in order to get a faster shutter speed. Say the best exposure you could get was 30th/sec at F2.8. You could increase the ISO on the camera from 100 to 400 giving you 2 extra stops - 125th/sec at F2.8.

However, the film would be underexposed and unless you told the lab to compensate, the images would be ruined. What the lab would do is adjust the developing times to allow for the adjustment of ISO at the time of shooting. This means that the images would be fine but a little "grainy", similar to digital "noise" nowadays. All very complicated and time consuming!

Slower shutter speeds are normally used and/or needed for landscape, architectural, night, still life or "special effect" photography.

Most of these subjects need good depth of field. The only way to achieve this is to have smaller apertures of F16 or less. As discussed earlier, the "knock-on" effect of this is slower shutter speeds.

You will always see the top landscape photographers using a tripod. This is because the best light for landscape photography is early morning or early evening when the sun is less intense. A small aperture is needed to get the best depth of field meaning slow speeds, hence the need for a tripod.

I wanted to use a small aperture for two reasons. Firstly, I needed good depth of field to ensure that the lightening and buildings were sharp. Secondly, a small aperture would give me a longer exposure time in order to catch the lightening and to allow the low-light glow from the buildings to be recorded.

The image above was taken with a 15 second exposure at F10 and ISO 125. It wasn’t easy to get and it took about 30 shots to get one I really liked. During these electrical storms you need to set up your camera on a tripod, set the shutter and aperture to allow for a long exposure (depending on how frequent the lightening is), and use a cable or remote release if you have one.

For frequent lightening, you can aim in the general direction and take exposures of between 5 and 15 seconds until you get a shot you like. For more infrequent lightening, you may need exposures of 15 seconds to a couple of minutes as you cannot judge when it will strike and you don’t want to miss one!

Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get it right straight away, just keep trying.

I will let you into a secret on how to get this type of shot with just basic equipment and a good knowledge of shutter speeds.

Ok. A basic and direct flash shot would normally give harsh shadows against the back wall, a faster shutter (60th/sec +) and smallish aperture, meaning that the fireplace and fire in the background would be extremely dark and not very inviting at all.

To get the shot as it is, with the family well lit, no harsh shadows and the fireplace with a cosy and "warm" feel to it, I set the shutter speed to a very slow 1/3rd/sec at F5.6 with an ISO of 200.