The Basics of Photography - Shutter Speed
Photo by Rowan Freeman on Unsplash
The second side of the exposure triangle. Welcome to shutter speed. This article is all about shutter speed, what it is, and how it affects your photos
What is Shutter Speed?
The easiest way to think about shutter speed is to compare it to how we blink as humans. At the simplest level, it’s how fast or slow your camera “blinks” to take a picture. Shutter speed is measured in time and is usually indicated as a fraction such as 1/400 or 1/8. With these examples, 1/400 is faster as the camera is only letting in light for 1/400th of a second, opposed to 1/8th of a second. When you take a photo with a high shutter speed, the subject will appear to be frozen in place with minimal blur. We see this a lot in sports photography or any form of photography with fast moving subjects. When using a fast shutter speed, you are letting in less light, therefore the photo will be darker unless you compensate with higher ISO or a wider aperture.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, a lower shutter speed such as 1/8th of a second will let in more light, but will introduce more blur if there is motion. This means that the photograph will be lighter and camera shake/blur can appear if the camera isn’t held still while taking the picture. Of course this can be used to create some interesting and creative photos using a technique called “shutter drag”, but that’s a topic for another day! Just like with a high shutter speed, you also have to compensate with lower ISO or a higher f/ stop to ensure that your photo isn’t over exposed.
Put it into practice
Slow Shutter Speed
Below are two photographs that I took that we will use for this example to visually see how shutter speed works. The first photo is a photo I took at a local concert at night. I took both photos on my Fujifilm XT5 using a 75mm prime lens (113mm equivalent). As you can see, there is a lot of motion blur, but I did this intentionally for a creative effect. In this instance I lowered my ISO to 125 as I was shooting with a relatively wide aperture (f/3.6) and didn’t want the photo over exposed. For this shot I used a shutter speed of 1/4th of a second which is quite slow, but as we learned earlier; the slower the shutter speed, the more light that gets let in, leading to a brighter image. This is why my ISO was set so low and my aperture wasn’t fully open at f/1.8
Photo taken by Braydon Cottrell using a slow shutter speed (shutter drag) (Fujifilm XT5 - 113mm - 125 ISO - f/3.6 - 1/4s shutter speed)
Photo taken by Braydon Cottrell using a high shutter speed (Fujifilm XT5 - 113mm - ISO 640 - f/2.5 - 1/8000s shutter speed)
High Shutter Speed
Now, let’s look at an example of a high shutter speed. In the photo above, I was at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on practice day photographing the Indy 500 cars as they raced around the track. In this photo, the car was pushing 180mph going around the track, but since I shot the photo with a shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second, it appears that the car is pretty well frozen in place. The car isn’t entirely frozen in place simply because of how fast it was going, even with a high shutter speed. But you get the idea. Now for this photo you will notice that I took it with a wider aperture at f/2.5 and with a higher ISO than the night time concert photo. Well this is because we have to remember our exposure triangle. Since I’m using a high shutter speed, that means that less light is reaching the sensor due to the camera blinking super fast, which would lead to a darker photo. So I have to compensate with a higher ISO and wider aperture to make sure the image is properly exposed.