Photography basics for dummies – Manual settings 3 - Shutter Speed

This is the final leg in understanding the basics in manual settings for your DSLR.  Using shutter speed effectively can give you astonishing and awe-inspiring images.  Let’s start right away…

What is shutter speed?

Shutter speed is the duration for which the camera shutter stays open when you click.

Maximum and minimum Shutter speed varies based on the camera used.  Most commonly the fastest shutter speed available would be 1/4000^th of a second, and the slowest would be 30 seconds.  However, this is only an example; certain cameras push this limit higher.

What does shutter speed do?

1. It controls the amount of light received at the sensor by opening and closing of the shutter.  Faster shutter speeds allow lesser light and slow shutter speeds allows more light.
2. It controls the sharpness of the image when shooting moving objects. Faster shutter speeds capture sharper images reducing motion blur. 

See below tabular image to understand how your image would appear based on the shutter speed setting. Assuming other settings is standard. I must say this table is a bit complex!  Give it a shot.

Why should I set my camera to faster shutter speeds such as 1/2000^th of a second or 1/4000^th of a second?

1. When shooting fast moving objects.
2. When attempting to shoot in Burst mode (Continuous Shooting)
3. When attempting to shoot without a tripod.

Shooting with fast shutter speeds require adequate lighting for the image to have the right exposure. Daylight and bright lights will suffice, shooting in low light or night scenarios will require you to use additional flash or compensate the same with higher ISO settings (ISO 800+, higher ISO values increases the sensor’s sensitivity to light, thus receiving more light), again doing so will increase the possibility of noise and grains in your output image.

When should I set my camera to Slow shutter speed such as 5 sec or 10 sec?

1. When you are equipped with a tripod. Shooting without a tripod will also capture jerks and shakes in the image, resulting in a blur output.
2. When you attempt to shoot flowing water and you require a silky flow texture.
3. When you attempt to shoot sharp images in low light scenario (Using tripod). Keeping the shutter open for a longer duration allows the camera sensor to receive more light.

Slow shutter speeds or long exposure settings are used to shoot still objects during low light scenarios. Slower shutter speeds require the use of a Tripod to ensure sharp images; handheld shots will not be sharp.  Shooting in daylight or bright light settings will overexpose your images. However, if your image gathers excessive light and appears too bright or just plain white! You can compensate this by reducing the ISO values (remember lower ISO allows lesser light), doing so will also give you crisper images.  If not, you can add a filter to your camera to cut inflow of light.  Also when shooting with slow shutter speeds during bright light or in day light it is preferable to use a filter to avoid over exposure.

Just as we finish going through the three most important points of basic photography, here are some tips on how to maintain balance with these three settings:

My images appear too bright when shooting in day?

Set your ISO lower, remember Higher ISO settings increase light sensitivity at the sensor. 

You could alternatively try faster shutter speeds. Faster shutter speeds allow lesser light.

My images appear too dark when shooting at night?

If you are shooting still objects using tripod, set your shutter slower to 1sec, 2sec or higher.

If you are shooting moving objects or without a tripod, set ISO800 or above.  However, you should see noise in the images.

What should I do if I’m seeing noise in my images during low light shooting?

Again, if you are shooting still objects using tripod, set your shutter speed higher and set ISO to lower than ISO400.

If the images appear dark, try turning your flash on or improving the lighting on the object.

If you are shooting moving objects; turn on flash or improve lighting on the object and then set ISO to lower than ISO400 to reduce noise.

How do I reduce motion blur?

Set faster shutter speeds; keep lowering until you see the desired output. 

If low lighting, try bumping the ISO settings a few notches, try using Flash.

Remember, the more you experiment, the more you learn.  

Now dust-out your DSLR and get clicking!!! 

Enjoy your photography.

Further Reading:

Part 1 : Basics and Aperture Settings

Part 2: ISO Settings

Photography basics for dummies – Manual settings 2 - ISO Settings

In the second part of learning Photography basics we are going through ISO settings.

ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization.  This terminology is carried over from the Film Camera days where ISO value represents the film’s sensitivity to absorb light.  In the modern day DSLR the same terminology is retained for easier understanding on the behavior of light in Photography.

Let me get you the basics of ISO for you.  Every camera has a Base ISO value, say ISO 100.  This is the lowest ISO setting possible in the camera, the values further increments in multiples of 2 to a max threshold as supported by the camera.  The ISO values would look like: 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, 6400, 12800….. etc. Each increment doubles and increases the sensitivity of light at the camera's sensor.

Note: Higher the ISO values will result in excessive noise and grains on your output image. This is something you have to sacrifice when attempting low-light photography without flash.

Working with ISO settings: For beginners like most of us, we can always go with the “Auto ISO” setting.  But I suggest you attempt photographing a given object with different ISO settings to easily understand its working.

Here’s an image to help you understand the overview of how changes in the ISO settings can vary the output image. The green check denotes the right setting.  

Scenario 1 - Day Bright Sun Light.

Setting ISO at 800 gives you too much exposure than desired. Moving down to ISO 100 would cut too much light.  Either ISO 200 or 400 would give us the best result.

Scenario 2 - Night Low Light

As I do not intend to use flash for this image, it is needed that I bump up the ISO to the highest possible value at the same time keeping check on the grain and noise.  ISO 800 gives me the desired brightness in the scenario. I could push for ISO 1600 for brighter image, however it would result in high noise and grain.

When should you make changes to ISO settings?

1.  When your image appears too bright or too dark.
2. When noise or grains appear in your image.
3. When you attempt to capture a picture in the dark without flash.
4. When you attempt to capture an object in motion and your images appear blur.

When should you increase your ISO setting?

1. When your image appears too dark. Increment the ISO in steps until you see the desired tone in the preview display.
2. When you try to shoot in low-light without flash, bump up the ISO few steps.
3. When you try to shoot an object in motion and it appears blur.  Increment the ISO values in this scenario to increase the light sensitivity; this in turn allows you to shoot faster. You’ll learn more about this in when reading about Shutter Speed.

When should you lower the ISO setting?

1. If you images appear too bright.  Lower ISO value, this cuts the sensitivity of light on the sensor.
2.  If your image has too much noise or grain.  Lower the ISO, this will reduce the grains but doing so also reduces amount of light, compensate this by using flash or increasing Shutter speed.
3. When you want to shoot a long-exposure shot.

Hope that went easy!  To be honest, not an easy ride on the ISO settings, you can only learn when you’re experimenting through the settings.

Our next stop will be Shutter Speed……

Further Reading

Part 1 : Basics and Aperture Settings

Part 3: Shutter Speed and Tips

Photography basics for dummies – Manual settings 1 - Aperture

Remember the day you first got your hands on a DSLR, you wanted to shoot some amazing photographs.  Remember later down the line, you are stuck using only the Auto mode!  Exactly, most hobby photographers do not achieve their maximum potential due to the fact they stick on to Auto mode all the time.  For all first timers and beginners, it has to start with understanding three important points of photography: Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO.  Commonly referred to as the three pillars or the three kings of photography and so on, this is the very exact point the following article will pass through.

Now sit tight and stay focused!!

The terms and explanation used will be easy to understand and newbie friendly  

For today, we will take the first step

Aperture:

Setting your camera to Aperture priority mode, most often termed “A” on your camera mode dial will enable you to manually set the Aperture opening (check manual if you are unable to find this on the dial).   Aperture settings are expressed in “f-stop” values (focus ratio). The f-stop is the ratio of  the focal length divided by the diameter of the lens.   The size of the aperture opening is inverse of the value, i.e. smaller f-stop values means larger aperture opening and larger f-stop values indicate smaller aperture opening (see below fig).

Aperture primarily controls two factors –

1          .        Amount of light passing through the lens

2          .        Depth of field

Let’s take a look into how aperture opening regulates the amount of light passing through the lens.

Finding the right aperture is very important to recreate the actual subject in your photograph. The setting of aperture will vary with amount of light available.  See side illustration for easy understanding.  The subject is photographed in bright sunlight.  Hence, a lower aperture, say f/2, will allow more light through the lens resulting in an over exposed image, too bright.  An aperture of f2.8 gives realistic lighting on the photograph in this particular scenario, whereas f/4 and f/5.6 allows too little light and subject appears dark.

Moving on to Aperture settings and its effect on Depth of field (DOF).

DOF simple represents the area of the image in focus.  The aperture setting will cause variations in DOF.  In simple words, larger the f-stop value (ex. f/32) brings more of the background into focus.  See illustrations for understanding.  We have four colored blocks placed at a distance of 10 meters each.  With higher aperture settings we can observe all four blocks are sharp, and going down the list with lower f-values we can observe only the blocks closer are in focus.  With the setting on f/2 only the first block is in focus.

Come back for reminder of the series to learn about ISO and Shutter speed.

Further Reading

Part 2: ISO Settings

Part 3: Shutter Speed and Tips