Photographers are obsessed with two things: Framing, and lighting.
To manipulate the brightness or darkness of a photo we play with how big is the aperture (f-stops), the shutter speed, and the ISO.
Today we will show the effects of the shutter speed on how bright or dark is your image.
What is shutter speed?
Shutter speed is exactly what it sounds like: It’s the speed at which the shutter of the camera opens and closes. A fast shutter speed creates a shorter exposure — the amount of light the camera takes in — and a slow shutter speed gives the photographer a longer exposure and thus more light.
Then there’s the instance where you want a really slow shutter speed that opens the aperture to let in more light, You can use slow shutter speed in a dimmer environment when you need more light to expose a shot correctly.
How to manipulate light with shutter speed
When adjusting shutter speed, consider light and motion. If you leave the shutter open a longer amount of time to capture more light.
The problem is that when the shutter is open longer, anything that moves in the frame during that time gets blurrier.
My rule of thumb is not to hold my camera with my hand if the shutter speed is slower than 1/60. For the times when I need a slow shutter speed, will need a tripod as well so that I will not have to hold the camera with my hand.
In this exercise, I take the same photo at different shutter speeds, all else being equal. I found this flower in the streets of my neighborhood in Montreal, Le Plateau.
As you can see, with the faster shutter speed, the image is sharper but it’s also darker. As I decrease the shutter speed, the image becomes a bit blurry (due to the movement of my hand when I press the button) and brighter.
Exercise for you
Take your camera and photograph the same subject at different shutter speeds.