Photography terms: Shutter speed

In yesterday’s post, I only mentioned shutter speed as one of the manual functions of photographic cameras. If you do have manual functions on your camera, this is something you should know. The picture, whether you are using a Film or a Digital camera, is being made only by the light which is passing through the lens and forming a picture on a film or image sensor (in a digital camera). Shutter’s position is between the lens and these light (photo) sensitive materials, so it’s function is to let the light pass trough for a certain time, and then close. Even if you don’t know this, that is happening every time. The amount of time the shutter is opened defines the amount of light that passes trough. So logically if you’re dealing with less light, usually in the morning, in the evening or maybe at night, the shutter speed will be longer, and in cases when there is high amount of light, the shutter speed shortens. Shutter speeds vary usually in this range:

• 1/8000 s
• 1/4000 s
• 1/2000 s
• 1/1000 s
• 1/500 s
• 1/250 s
• 1/125 s
• 1/60 s
• 1/30 s
• 1/15 s
• 1/8 s
• 1/4 s
• 1/2 s
• 1 s
• 2 s
• 4 s
• 8 s
• 15 s
• B (for bulb) — keep the shutter open as long as the release lever is engaged.

In case you can manually define shutter speed, you are able do achieve lots of different effects. In a Time passes by picture, shooter speed is manually set to longer than needed so the people who were moving left a longer trace, and the wall normally stands still. In the Lights picture the shutter speed is very long so while it was opened, the camera was moving so only one source of light left a big trace. In other cases when shortening the shooter speed, you can make a moving objects freeze and to look like they stopped like on the Chinese Fire picture. Variations you can make depends only on your imagination, so if your camera do have manual commands, take in and use them, experiment as much as you can. If having any trouble don’t be shy, leave a comment and I’ll answer you as soon as possible. The sony digital camera is one of the best deals offered these days, and is amongst one of the cheap cameras to offer so much. Closely competing is the samsung digital camera.