Measuring Shutter Speed – Photography Basics

1. Measuring Shutter Speed – Photography Basics How is shutter speed measured? This is a common question in the minds of many newbie photographers. Shutter speed is among the three main pillars of photography, along with ISO and aperture. The speed of your camera’s shutter is responsible for two things, adjusting the level of brightness of photos and creating dynamic and dramatic effects by blurring motion or freezing action. To understand shutter speed better, one must take time to get to know their camera shutter. Shutter speed is produced by the speed at which camera shutter opens and shuts. Your camera’s shutter serves as a curtain in front of your camera sensor. This shutter remains closed until the camera is fired. As the camera fires, the shutter, which shields the camera sensor, fully exposes it to light passing through the lens. Once the sensor has collected light, it closes immediately, shielding the sensor from any more light entering through the camera lens. Oftentimes, the button firing the camera is also called shutter or shutter button, which triggers the opening and shutting of the actual shutter mechanism. Shutter speed, on the other hand, refers to the length of time that the camera shutter remains open, effectively exposing the camera sensor to light. In the most basic sense, shutter speed is the amount of time a camera spends taking an image. The effects of a fast or slow shutter speed result in great variations on how images appear. A long shutter speed, for instance, exposes the sensor for a good amount of time, the resulting effect is a blurring of motion. Motion blur is commonly seen in car advertisements where a sense of motion and speed needs to be communicated by intentionally blurring moving parts, such as the wheels. A slow shutter speed, on the other hand, is generally used to photograph objects in dim environments or at night. Just as shutter speed can be used to blur motion, it can likewise be used to freeze the motion of fast-moving subjects like cars driving past, birds in flight, water droplets. The question remains, how is shutter speed measured? Shutter speed or exposure time is measured in fractions of a second. For instance, 1/100th shutter speed takes photograph in 0.01 seconds (the amount of time the camera sensor is exposed to light).