Lets add motion to our images.
In part 1 of: Get the most out of your camera, we looked at how to use
the aperture and the creative uses of depth-of-field. In this part
we’ll look at how to use the shutter button on your camera and how both
the shutter and the aperture control exposure.
The shutter is a mechanical device that controls the length of time that light is allowed to act on the film.
Most standard cameras allow us to use a range between 16 second and
1/1000 second. You might be wondering, why anyone would use a long
shutter time of 16 seconds: I’ve used this and even longer shutter
times when taken lowlight landscape images. I would always advise the
use of a tripod with these long exposures time to avoid blur images.
Using a shutter speed of 1/125 second should safely avoid overall blur
due to camera movement if you hold the camera by hand. Any longer
shutter time should require a tripod.
Each time you open the shutter by one, we double the light, when we
close down the light by one we half the light. Open the shutter at 1
second allows twice the light as that of a ½ second.
The shutter can also be used creatively when taking landscape images or
sport images. If you want to add motion to your image a slow shutter
speed can give an image an extra bit of sway. No more so than taking
images of streams. Using a slow shutter speed when photographing water
will cause the water to blur, resulting with the image expressing
motion.
By contrast, a fast shutter speed of 1/250 would be used in shooting
wildlife or where the subject that you’re shooting needs to be still
and sharp. Most wildlife photographers would use a fast shutter speed.
By using the shutter and aperture together we control exposure. Both
allow light to enter the camera: the shutter by time and the aperture
by the size of the hole in the lens.
For example: you’re shooting a landscape scene; you get an exposure
reading at f/11 at ¼ second. You know that by using f/11 that the
entire image wont be sharp. You want to shoot at f/22, which is four
times less light than f/11. You need to quadruple the light through
time; each time you open the shutter by one you double the light, so
open it by two stops and your exposure time will be 1 second. Your
final exposure should read f/22 at 1 second.
At the best of times, calculating the correct exposure can be a
difficult task, but with a few simple tips our images can produce
eye-catching colours that we see all around us every day.
