Camera Basics: Everything You Need to Know About How Shutter Speeds Affect Your Photos (VIDEO)

If you’re reading this page we assume it’s no mystery that the term “shutter speed” describes the length of time your camera’s shutter remains open when you take a photograph. That’s half of the exposure equation, the other being lens aperture, which determines how much light hits the sensor (or film) in your camera.

But as you’ll see in the tutorial below from brutegeek, there’s a lot more to know about how shutter speeds affect the look of your images. The shutter speed you choose enables you to either freeze action or intentionally create motion blur depending upon the effect you’re after.

Fast shutter speeds, for example, let you to capture sharp images of action sports, or even a bullet in mid-flight. Slow shutter speeds, on the other hand, are responsible for dramatic, long-exposure photos of automobile light trails at night and other special effects.

The video below begins with an explanation of how a camera’s shutter works, and then demonstrates the best shutter speeds to use for different types of images. After watching this video be sure to check out two other basic tutorials we posted, one explaining how apertures work and another with everything you need to know about focal length

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