Often times it’s good to have a quick definition of a term or component of photography to use as reference. This way you don’t have to be embarrassed not to know. Today we discuss…quickly…

Shutter Speed

One of the main components of exposure, shutter speed, is the rate at which the shutter, opens and closes to expose a scene. This process is the same whether your working with a film camera or a digital camera.

Shutter speed works to control two aspects of your exposure:

The amount of light (your light meter will measure this)

The speed at which the scene is shot (your camera will measure this in increments of time)

Often times you’ll find photographers refer to shutter speeds as faster/shorter or slower/longer. It doesn’t really matter what you call them as long as you know that faster and shorter are the same in that a faster shutter will open and close, exposing the media, in a shorter amount of time. Conversely, a slower shutter will open and close in a longer amount of time.

Every camera is different. Most will have a shutter speed range from 1/4000 sec as the fastest to a thirty-second time exposure for the slowest. Most cameras also come with a bulb or “B” setting. This allows the photographer to hold the shutter open for any amount of time.

Shutter speed defined. Short and sweet. Like at 1/500 of a second. Yeah…I went there.