Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is the unit on measurements which determines how long the shutter on a camera remains open for, so that it can capture the image. This can be controlled to change the images to how exposed or unexposed they are. The slower the shutter speed, the longer the image is exposed for, this  is a great way to capture movement. Then also the faster the shutter speed, the shorter the image is exposed, which is and advantage for freezing action shots. The shutter speed and aperture both control the amount of light that is exposed. In order to achieve a successful photo, when capturing the image I considered the lighting conditions so that the shutter speed would accompany it. If the photo was too dark it was under exposed, therefore needed a slower shutter speed, and if the photo was too light it was over exposed, which means it needed a slower shutter speed. Slow shutter speeds are also used when it's poor weather conditions. When I first started off using the cameras in media I had very little knowledge on their capability, gradually I've been building up my skills, such as learning about shutter speeds. In class we did a session on how to use shutter speed to capture movement, I've included the photos from the lesson below.

To achieve motion blur which is displayed in this image, the shutter speed needs to be set to a 60th of a second. Motion blur is when you deliberately want a blur.

I set the camera to 1/250th of a second to capture this freeze walking image.

The camera was set to 1/500th of a second to capture the motion blur on this running image.

I found it difficult to decided how fast or slow to have the shutter open for, as it was hard to judge the speed that my partner was moving. For some of the photos I used trial and error, I did this until I achieved a comfortable speed where i could experiment with different positions to capture different movement.