Now that you’ve been introduced to photography in the previous chapter, this Photography Basics guide is about to get more technical. And that’s not a bad thing! Welcome to Chapter 3: Shutter Speed. In the following article, I will explain everything you need to know about shutter speed in very simple language.
I also made a video explaining shutter speed if that’s how you prefer to learn things:
What is Shutter Speed?
Shutter speed is the length of time the camera’s shutter is open, exposing light from the outside world onto the camera sensor (or film). In other words, it’s how long your camera spends taking a photo. It is one of the most important camera settings that you need to know.
Shutter speed is measured in seconds, or fractions of a second. For example, your shutter speed may be 10 seconds long, meaning that the camera sensor is exposed to the outside world for a full ten seconds. Or, it could be much faster, even something like 1/1000th of a second! At this shutter speed, the camera sensor is exposed for less time than the blink of an eye.
Your shutter speed has a few important effects on how your photos will appear. The first big effect is motion blur. If you expose your photo for a long enough period of time, and something in the photo moves (like a person walking past), that subject will be blurry along the direction of motion. This effect is used quite often in advertisements of cars and motorbikes, where a sense of speed and motion is communicated to the viewer by intentionally blurring the moving wheels.
On the other hand, shutter speed can also be used to do just the opposite – freeze motion. If you use an especially fast shutter speed, you can eliminate motion even from fast-moving objects, like birds in flight, or cars driving past. If you use a fast shutter speed while taking pictures of water, each droplet will hang in the air completely sharp, which might not even be visible to our own eyes.
As a side note, it is not just subject motion but also your motion that can end up in a photo. I’ve never met anyone who can handhold a sharp photo at 10 seconds long! Our hands just have too much natural movement. A tripod is almost always necessary if you intend to use a multi-second shutter speed.
Shutter speed also changes the brightness of your photo. There are other ways to change the brightness of a photo, too – otherwise the two photos above would have very different brightness levels! But simply put, a long exposure lets in more light than a short exposure. So a photo at 10 seconds would be very bright, and a photo at 1/1000th of a second would be very dark, if you don’t do anything else to compensate.
How Does Shutter Speed Work at a Physical Level?
Shutter speed is relatively simple to explain from a physical standpoint. There is a curtain in front of your camera sensor (called the shutter curtain). This curtain usually stays closed until you take a photo. When the camera fires, the curtain opens and fully exposes the camera sensor to the light that is coming through your lens. To end the exposure, the shutter closes immediately, stopping the light from hitting the sensor. (As a side note, the button that fires the camera is also called “shutter” or “shutter button,” because it triggers the shutter to open and close.)
On some newer cameras, you’ll find an electronic shutter rather than a physical, mechanical curtain. Or you’ll find both – many cameras have both a mechanical shutter and an electronic shutter. The principle is basically the same, but with an electronic shutter, the camera is electronically telling the pixels to start and stop recording the image.
In any case, using a particular shutter speed (say, 1/10 second) means that the shutter is literally open for that period of time (in this case, one tenth of a second).
How Shutter Speed is Measured
Shutter speed is measured in fractions of a second. For example, a shutter speed of 1/4 means a quarter of a second, while 1/250 means one-two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second (a much shorter period of time). On the camera, these may simply be written as “250” or “4,” even though they represent fractions.
Most modern DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have a very wide range of available shutter speeds. Usually, you’ll be able to shoot anything from 1/8000th of a second on the fast end, to 30 seconds on the slow end. You can also shoot very long exposures (several minutes or more) by using external remote triggers, although most photos do not require such long shutter speeds.
Shutter Speed and Exposure
Let me talk a little bit more about how shutter speed affects exposure, or specifically, the brightness of an image.
If you use a long shutter speed, your camera sensor gathers a lot of light over the course of the long exposure. The resulting photo will be quite bright. By using a quick shutter speed, your camera sensor is only exposed to a small fraction of light, resulting in a darker photo.
However, shutter speed is not the only variable that affects the brightness of an image. There are also aperture and ISO (which are the next two chapters in this Photography Basics guide), along with the actual brightness of the scene in front of you. So, you have some flexibility when you’re deciding on a shutter speed. But you need to pick all of your settings carefully and intentionally.
Shutter speed can be a vital tool to balance out the brightness of the ambient light. On a sunny day, you may need to use a fast shutter speed so that your photo isn’t overexposed. Or, if it is dark out, a long shutter speed may be necessary to avoid a photo that is too dark (which, in turn, could require a tripod, due to motion blur from handholding the camera).
For many people, this is the main reason to adjust shutter speed: to make sure your photos are the proper brightness. Still, motion blur concerns are also very important, and should not be overlooked.
Fast and Slow Shutter Speeds
A “fast” shutter speed is typically whatever it takes to freeze action. If you are photographing birds, that may be 1/1000th second or faster. However, for general photography of normal subjects, you should be able to take pictures at 1/200th second or 1/100th second without introducing motion blur.
A “slow” or “long” shutter speed is typically 1 second or longer. At that point, you will definitely need to use a tripod in order to get sharp images. These shutter speeds are useful for low-light photography where you’re trying to gather as much light as possible, such as when photographing the Milky Way. (I typically use about a 20 second shutter speed to photograph the night sky.) You can also use slow shutter speeds to capture movement intentionally. If anything in your scene is moving when you use these shutter speeds, it will appear very blurry.
In between, shutter speeds from 1/100th second to 1 second are still considered relatively slow. You may not be able to handhold them without introducing camera shake from your hands, especially close to the one-second mark. But if your camera has good image stabilization, and your subject is staying still, it can be possible to take sharp photos in this range without a tripod.
I’m going to emphasize that again. Many lenses and cameras these days have specific image stabilization technologies (also known as “vibration reduction”) that can let you take sharp photos handheld in low light. However, they only reduce shake from your hands and do nothing to eliminate blurry photos caused by subject movement. So even if you have the best image stabilization technology in the world, you will still need to use fast shutter speeds when your subject is moving quickly.
If you want to know more about which shutter speeds are safe to handhold, and which require a tripod, I recommend reading our articles about the reciprocal rule and how to hold a camera.
How to Set Shutter Speed
Most cameras handle shutter speeds automatically by default. When the camera is set to “Auto” mode, the shutter speed is selected by the camera without your input (and so are aperture and ISO). However, you can still set the shutter speed manually if necessary.
This is something we will cover a lot more in Chapter 8 of this guide, “Camera Modes.” But to give you a little preview…
- By setting the camera to “Shutter Priority” mode, you choose the shutter speed, and the camera automatically selects the aperture. (You would set your ISO separately.)
- By setting the camera to “Manual” mode, you choose both shutter speed and aperture manually. (You would set your ISO separately.)
You might be surprised to hear that I actually recommend letting the camera select your shutter speed automatically in many cases. This doesn’t mean I’m a fan of the camera’s “Auto” mode, though. Instead, I find that most of the time, I would rather select my aperture and ISO manually, while allowing the camera to float the shutter speed to whatever value gives me the right exposure. But all of this is a little beyond the scope of the article you’re reading right now. You can read more about it in Chapter 8: Camera Modes.
But even if the camera is selecting the shutter speed automatically, you need to pay very close attention to what value it’s selecting. For example, what if the shutter speed is getting too long to handhold sharply? In that case, I will often pull out my tripod. Alternatively (and this is something you’ll learn over the next two chapters), I will use a brighter aperture or ISO so that the shutter speed doesn’t need to be so long.
How to Find Shutter Speed on a Camera
Do you know how to find what shutter speed your camera is using? It’s typically very easy to find it. On cameras that have a top panel, the shutter speed is typically located on the top left corner:
If your camera does not have a top LCD, you can look at the viewfinder or the rear LCD. The shutter speed is typically displayed at the bottom left corner.
Like I explained in the image above, shutter speed on most cameras isn’t actually written as a fraction of a second. It’s usually just written as a regular number. So if your camera says something like “250” where the shutter speed is supposed to be, just know that it really means 1/250th of a second.
Finally, if you still cannot find the shutter speed, set your camera to “Aperture Priority” mode by spinning the PSAM dial on the top of the camera to “A.” Make sure that you have turned “AUTO ISO” off. Then, start pointing around your camera from dark to bright areas. The number that changes will be your shutter speed.
Recommended Shutter Speed Settings
There is no set formula for shutter speed in every case because part of setting shutter speed is a creative choice. However, there are some good guidelines for starting points. Here are some common scenarios that you may wish to try:
| Situation | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| People who pose and stay relatively still | 1/125 |
| Moving people | 1/200-1/800 |
| Landscape: blurring water movement | 1-10 seconds (and a tripod is necessary) |
| Nonmoving landscape from a tripod | Any! Whatever it takes to gather the right amount of light for your exposure |
| Nonmoving landscape handheld | Anything 1/60 or faster (otherwise you risk blur from camera shake) |
| Perched birds | 1/320 (they still move a little, see guide) |
| Birds in flight | 1/2000 (read more) |
| Macro photography | 1/320 (close-up photos also magnify camera shake) |
| Flash photography | 1/200 (the flash sync speed. You can use longer if you want a blur effect behind the frozen subject) |
| Astrophotography | 10-25 seconds (see guide) |
Basically, choosing a shutter speed involves asking yourself how bright you want the photo to be, and how much blur you want. There’s always some shutter speed that will freeze all the motion and get you a totally sharp shot. Then it’s up to you to go lower if you want a bit of blur.
Although the numbers presented here are a good starting point, you should experiment and try different shutter speeds to see their effects.
That does it for shutter speed! It is one of the most important settings in the world of photography, and hopefully you now understand how it works at a basic level. The next chapter in my Photography Basics guide covers the concept of aperture – one of the other “big three” camera settings, and my personal favorite. Below is the full table of contents for Photography Basics.
Download as an eBook
I’ve received many requests over the years to download Photography Basics for offline viewing. As of late 2024, I’m excited to announce that I now have a dedicated eBook version of Photography Basics! The eBook covers the same information but is optimized for offline reading/printing, with a beautiful design and updated text. Photography Life members get this eBook included with their membership ($5/month, cancellable any time) alongside a lot of other benefits – including a Q&A group if you have questions about the topics I’ve covered in these articles. You can read more information about our memberships here.
