Lesson #3: Shutter speed

So sit down and open up those photos you took during Lesson #2. Remember how that as you used a smaller and smaller aperture, the motion in your photo became blurry? That’s because of your shutter speed. Your shutter speed is the length of time your shutter remains open allowing light to hit the sensor. If your shutter speed reads 125, for example, that means the shutter stayed open for 1/125th of a second. If it reads 15, that means it stayed open for 1/15th of a second.

Longer shutter speeds increase the chance that a moving subject will appear blurred in your photo. That happens because the subject moves while the shutter is still open. To freeze action in your photos you have to use a higher (i.e.- shorter) shutter speed. When shooting sports I generally try to keep my shutter speed at 1/250th or higher.

But blur is not necessarily a bad thing.

So your assignment for this lesson. Take your camera and put it in “S” or “Tv” mode. It’ll probably help for this assignment to set your ISO to auto if your camera has that feature (and most do these days). Find a subject (or subjects) that are moving. Shoot pictures of those subjects at a variety of shutter speeds. Take some at 1/15th, 1/30th, 1/60th, 1/125th, 1/250th and up. Play, have fun. Then go home and put your photos in the computer and examine your photos and see how the differing shutter speeds affected them. And by the way ... ENJOY YOUR PHOTOS!!!

Next lesson!