Shutter setting in photography

Shutter is an important setting. From the previous post we found out that aperture determines the amount of light reaching the sensor or film, the shutter determines the time for how long the light reaches the sensor or film.

It also determines if a moving subject is frozen still or blurred. In itself shutter is a curtain or set of leaves (just like aperture) which moves (opens and closes) in front of the sensor or film in order to control the light reaching it. Together with aperture shutter determines the exposure of an image, we'll take a closer look at that in the next post.

The latest DSLR's will offer you a shutter speed range from 30 sec. to 1/4000 sec. This is pretty useful. So how we use this choice? Let's say you are taking a picture of a waterfall, if you will choose high shutter speed then the falling water will "freeze" in action, the image will look static, but if you set your shutter speed to say 1/60 th of a sec. then the falling water will actually look like in motion, because it will be blurred by using slow shutter speed.

Now another useful way to use the shutter speed setting is when you are taking a portrait picture in bright light you want to use a large aperture in order to blur the background and thus separate your subject from it, but you risk overexposing the image. So in this case you should use a high shutter speed to limit the bright light.

You can use semi automatic settings like Aperture priority, where you set the aperture you need and the camera will choose the right shutter speed to get a correctly exposed image, or you can use Shutter priority setting for setting the needed shutter speed and the camera will set the appropriate aperture to get a correct exposure. So you should choose the appropriate mode for your priorities, either its depth of field or freezing or blurring the action.