Hello LCC members,

In the previous post I talked about aperture which again is the f number i.e. f4,f8,f16 etc.

Put most simply – Aperture is ‘the opening in the lens. Moving from one f-stop to the next doubles or halves the size of the amount of opening in your lens (and the amount of light getting through).

So we have that concept down right 🙂

Now we will go into the shutter and shutter speed which is the length of time the digital sensor sees the scene. Shutter speed is measured in seconds and fractions of a second 1/500, 1/250, 1/125, 1/60, 1/30, 1/15, 1/8 etc. Notice how these numbers double, keep in mind as aperture settings also double the amount of light that is let in as a result increasing shutter speed by one stop and decreasing aperture by one stop should give similar exposure level. We will talk more about the relationship of shutter speed, aperture and ISO in a future post.

Some tips about shutter speed and hand holding your camera.

First off when using a 50mm lens you can typically get away with 1/60 shutter speed but if you increase the focal length of the lens to 100mm it will increase to 1/125. Now with a lens   or camera body that has built in image stabilization that can lower the hand holding shutter speed to 1/50  or 1/40

The best way to figure out what your gears lowest shutter speed for hand holding is go and play a little. Shoot some images at 1/40 1/50 1/60 then look at them on your computer and see which shutter speed yields the best results.

Now some image examples these images were shot while hand holding the camera set at  f22 ISO 100 with a focal length of 12mm the image has been cropped in tight to the boat.

Shutter speed on this image is 1/10

Shutter speed on this image is 1/40

Shutter speed on this image is 1/125

Here is a Link to a Shutter Speed Chart

In the next post I will talk about ISO which be leading us into the bermuda triangle sorry what I meant to say was the exposure triangle which can be mysterious to.