What is Shutter Speed?

The term "shutter speed" comes from the camera's shutter which acts as a curtain that moves in front of the sensor on DSLR cameras. The shutter allows for either large amounts of light in to reach the sensor, or very small amounts of light depending on what you are trying to shoot. When you take a photo with a DSLR camera, you will notice the clicking sound on the camera when the shutter is moving back and forth over the sensor. That is one of the major downfalls of using a phone as your primary camera instead of a DSLR.   


How can someone measure a camera's shutter speed?

Most DSLR's on the market display the shutter speed using either fractions or whole numbers of a second when configuring the shutter speed. When you take the photo, most camera will automatically attach the shutter speed and any other related settings used in the photo to be viewed when you put the photo onto a computer.


How does it effect the camera's exposure?

Any time you decide to change the shutter speed, be sure to release that the exposure and the amount of light entering the camera will change depending on how long you set the shutter speed to. If you decide to set the shutter speed to to a longer value, your photo will result in being too bright. If you set the shutter to a very short value, you will have your photo turn out very dark. Both exposure and shutter speed play important roles and are very dependent in each other.


What's the difference between using different shutter speeds?

                      

                    Low                                          High

On the photo to the left is a catbird that was taken at a low shutter speed of 1/400's of a second and off to the right is photo of my brother jumping at a long shutter speed of 0.8 seconds.






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