Shutter Speeds

Shutter speed, put simply, is the length of time the shutter is left open, letting light hit the lens.The shutter speed as above is measured in jumps of fraction, called steps. Therefore, increasing the shutter speed by one step reduces 1/2 the amount of time the shutter is open. Decreasing the shutter speed by one step increases 1/2 the amount of time the shutter is left open.

The lowest shutter speed of 30 lets the most light in for the longest amount of time, while the highest shutter speed of 1/4000 lets light in for the least amount of time.

This is an example during my photography lesson of when a high shutter speed is required. This meant I could capture the movement of a seagull as it takes off for flight, without any blur from its motion.

Conventionally, a faster shutter speed is best to prevent any blur in your photos. However, there are other times a slow shutter speed is good, to purposefully manipulate an image to draw attention to a specific feature, for example the speed of a car:

To experiment with shutter speed, I used a slow speed to capture the motion of a car passing in the background to a person in the foreground. Therefore, contrast is created between the background and foreground, between the two ‘objects’ of the picture, and between one’s motion and another’s stillness.