What Is Shutter Speed In Camera?

Shutter speed is most easily defined as the amount of time the shutter is open. So, whether that is one second or 1/1000 of a second... knowing how to use shutter speed to your advantage is a basic photographic skill that you shouldn't live without.

Now, I am going to explain how the shutter works, and what it is, and how you can start using shutter speed to take pictures.

Earlier; I mentioned that the shutter is the amount of the time that your shutter is open, but what is a shutter? The shutter mechanism is actually made up of two parts. We will call them curtain A and curtain B.

When you fire the shutter button; curtain A rises to allow light to enter the camera to be captured, then curtain B rises to meet curtain A. They both reset to the closed position together.

There is an extra step in DSLR and SLR cameras. There is a mirror at a 45 degree angle in front of the shutter. That mirror reflects light that comes to the lens up to the viewfinder on your camera; so you can see what's happening.

mirror in a DSLR camera

So when you fire the shutter release button, that mirror pops up... allow the light to come to the shutter; then the shutter goes through its normal mechanism of opening and closing.

Mirrorless cameras obviously don't have a mirror. So they don't have the step of the mirror popping up and popping back down.

mirrorless camera

HOW TO USE SHUTTER SPEED TO TAKE PICTURES

Since shutters allow light from the scene to enter into the camera; the amount of time that the scene changes while the shutter is open can have a drastic effect on the image that you take.

There are three great ways to use the shutter speed to take pictures that you love.

Using a fast shutter speed like 1/200 of a second or faster can freeze fast moving object.
Using a slow shutter speed like 1/2 of a second or much longer can give you a different effect. Have you ever seen those pictures where there is a river or a waterfall and the water is just smooth and foggy and white and beautiful? That's the effect of using a slow shutter speed. It happens because the light that's coming into your camera while shutters open is continuously changing. So, all of that motion is captured on to one image and that's how you end up with the blurry foggy looking water; while everything else is crisp.
Using a much slower shutter speed can allow you not just to capture subject but also to show the movement behind it (see the images below).