Objective:  The objective of today's lesson is to teach you what shutter speed is, what is controls and how it does so.  This lesson builds on the previous lesson about Aperture.

Our Monday lesson is a little late today.  The studio was busy!  Today is the third lesson and I hope you guys are enjoying these.  I would love it if you commented and posted some of your example images.  I think other people would really enjoy seeing your work as well.

Let's begin!  Here's your dictionary definition:  shutter speed is the length of time a camera's shutter is open; the total exposure is proportional to this exposure time, or the duration of light reaching the film or image sensor.

The shutter is basically a little door inside your camera that opens and shuts (hence the name).  Think of it this way...the shutter door opens for a period of time.  The light enters and goes through the f-stop hole onto the film or image sensor.  So, the shutter is the amount of time that the volume of light (controlled by your f-stop) is allowed to touch the film.


Shutter speeds are numbers and they refer to fractions of a second.  If you have a shutter speed of 60 that means 1/60th of a second.  Generally speaking, I would not hand hold your camera and take pictures of anything that is moving using a shutter speed slower than 1/60th.  Slower shutter speeds would be 30, 15, 8 and so on.  The higher the number, the faster the shutter opens and closes and vice versa.


That leaves the question- how does the shutter control motion? Imagine that I am running and you take my picture.  The film or sensor will record light for the amount of time the shutter door is open.  If you set your camera at 1/60 of a second then for the duration of that time, whatever happens in front of the camera will be recorded.  Here's an example.  I had my son, Sayer, shake his head from side to side.  These were taken at 1/30th (left image) and 1/60th (right).  You can see how, while both blurry, the 60th starts to get less blurry.

Here is the same action but shot at 1/500th of a second. 


So, how do you know when to shoot at what speed?  You will end up having to experiment a little but here are some general guidelines:


below 1/60th- use with caution, a tripod or for intentional motion blur (which can be very cool)
1/60- Things that are not moving around very much at all
1/125 and 1/250- moderate movement
1/500 and up- things that are moving fast, running, jumping, sports, etc.

These are by no means exact because it really depends on how fast the action is.  Think of it as being a continuum from slowest to fastest and as the movement gets faster the shutter speed must as well.

Here are some other examples.  This image was shot at 1/500th and then at 1/30th.

These two were shot using 1/30th of a second.  To give you an idea of how fast he was moving, think about someone dancing.

Here is an example at 1/125th you can see that it gave us a little blur while the slower moving parts of the image are getting more clear.  Motion blur can be a very cool thing in the right circumstance.  For Flickr lovers, just type in "long exposure" in the search box and you will see some very cool stuff that people are doing with very, very slow shutter speeds.
 

I love this little 4-up of Sayer jumping around.  These were shot at 1/500th and higher.

Okay, now how do you use it?  The best way to start experimenting with this is to set your camera into the shutter speed priority mode.  On Canon that is TV and on Nikon it is S.  If you are using a point-and-shoot, then your setting is probably the running man.  On a point-and-shoot it may be harder to get purposeful blur because the running man icon is going to be a higher shutter speed, which will freeze the action.  You'll have to experiment.  In the shutter speed priority mode, you will choose a shutter speed on your dial and the camera will calculate the other parts of the exposure (like f-stop).

Your homework:  Find a model and try and imitate the pictures above.  Try and get someone frozen in an action (fast shutter speed) and then try and get some motion blur (slow shutter speed).  If you don't have a handy model, you can have someone toss a ball in the air and shoot it various times with various speeds.  Your kid's next soccer game is a great place to practice.  When your done, come back and post some of your shots.  I can't wait to see them!

To get your creative juices going, this was an image that Danny shot at a wedding that we did together recently that I think really illustrates the idea that as long as the shutter is open it will record information.  This was a long exposure shot of a sparkler.  I love it!

Now, GO SHOOT!