What is Shutter Speed?

SHUTTER SPEED

There are three very important elements that go into the correct exposure when taking a photo and each of the three work together to capture the perfect photo!  

Once all balanced TA-DA the correct exposure.

I follow these steps before I take my pictures.

White Balance - where are you taking your photo, sunny, shade, cloudy.  Canons do a great job on the Auto getting the WB correct but you should get in the habit of setting this yourself. The WB is not part of the exposure triangle but it must be set correctly to get a proper photo.  

See below what can happen to your image if not set correctly.

The photo is the same across the three rows, all I changed was the WB and see what crazy things 

happen to the same photo if the WB is not set correctly.

1. ISO - What is your lighting situation.  If you are outside on a well lit day 100 is a great setting, this means you have ample natural light around you to expose the photo.  Now, if you are in the shade or in a darker area you can bump it to 200.  If you are inside your house during the day or evening 400 might work.  Remember the film cameras of yesteryear? Remember how they were sold by an ISO number and what type of  lighting you were going to be in.  Well that's the same ISO in your digital camera, minus the film.  So, if you have ample light and set at 100 you will get a great photo, however, as you bump the ISO higher and higher 400, 800, 1600 + you will begin to see some "noise" in the photo called grain.  The better the camera body you have the better it's able to handle pushing up the ISO in a low light situation.  Bumping up the ISO (400, 800, 1600) allows the sensitivity to increase to capture your image correctly in low light, but you risk noise in your photo.  A low ISO of 100 for example means you have plenty natural light needed to correctly expose the photo.

2. Aperture ~  f/stop - This function is all determined by your lens and not the camera body!! Aperture is expressed in numbers f/1.8, f2.0, f2.8, f4.0, f/5.6, f/8.0, f/11, f/16 these are full stop numbers but your camera has many in-between.  Here is the confusion....the smaller the F/stop the larger the opening in the lens and the larger the f/stop the smaller the opening.  So at an f/1.8 you get lots of light in the lens with the large opening and you also get the blurry background.  With a high f/stop maybe f/5.6 the opening is much smaller in the lens, allowing less light and more of your photo will be in focus.

This photo shows photos taken with a very low F/stop f1/8, f/2.0 - my object in the front is in focus and the ever famous blur {Bokeh} is in the background.  

If I had changed the f/stop to f11 the full photo would have been in focus!

Lens' with lower F/stops are more expensive.  Typically a kit lens will go as low as f/3.5 as the lowest it will go.  So may first time lens' purchased are the 50mm 1.8 which are very reasonably priced for a really amazing lens. It's my favorite lens. 

3. Shutter Speed - This final setting controls the movement in your photo. You can freeze motion or you can show motion in your photo.  Shutter speed records how fast the light is let into your camera and then the image recorded.  The higher the shutter speed the sharper the image will be and a freezing of the image.  The lower the shutter speed the less sharp and blurry or the feeling of motion can be captured.

On the left 1/4 sec. is one forth of a second - slow in camera terms, and on the right 1/1000th is one one thousandth of a second, super fast to freeze the water. 

The girls are frozen with a fast shutter speed, Sport photographers use shutter speed for all the shots you get of the players frozen in mid air.