Friday, October 17, 2008

What you can do with shutter speed

To know what sort of photos you can shoot by manipulating the use of shutter speed on your DSLR, you need to know what shutter speed is. Shutter speed is a speed made with a shutter. Haha…Just kidding.

Actually, a shutter speed is the measurement used to denote how long the shutter will allow lights to strike the censor component of your digital camera. This timing is measured in fractions of a second like 1/1000, 1/500, 1/250 or 1 for 1 second. The cool part of DSLR cameras is that you can play around with shutter speed settings and go creative about it.

We can use the analogy in the previous post to exemplify this. So let’s go back to the window curtain example we mentioned before. If earlier the curtain opening is used to depict aperture size, shutter speed can be used to refer to the time of how long you will slide the window curtain to the side and then shut it back completely so that you being the censor can see what’s outside of the window.

The idea is that if you shut the curtain slowly, you get to see more things going on outside your window. If you shut the curtain very fast, you will literally see a still representation of what’s going on outside. You won’t be able to see the leaves falling slowly outside your window pane for instance.

Shutter speed can be used to take a photo with a sense of movement or motion. For example, you can take photo of moving traffic at night. With a slow shutter speed settings, you can create an effect as if the highway consists of fast moving lights instead or actual cars or other vehicles on the road.

Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Set dial to “S” for shutter speed priority settings. Again, different cameras use different symbols for the shutter speed priority selection so check your manual.
  2. You can set the shutter speed to 1/4 or longer like 1 second or more. The correct aperture setting will be set accordingly. Too add, you need to experiment depending on the amount of light available at the location of where you are taking the photo. Leaving the shutter open for too long may cause your photo to be too bright if they are many vehicles on the highway.
  3. Don’t forget to use auto focus and choose a suitable focal reference. You can use a non moving object to use as your focusing point. Use manual focus instead, if you can't get a sharp focus in range. Also, you need to use a tripod to avoid camera shake. Press the shutter release button halfway to activate auto focus.
  4. Press the shutter release button completely to take the photo. Keep practicing until you get the perfect shot.

Good luck.

No comments: