The beginners guide to Analogue photography. 3 --shutter speed--

 

Already the third post on the beginners guide, for the other parts, just click:

Part one

Part two

 

So we have come to the third most important part of photography. Shutter speed.

Shutter speed goes hand in hand together with the aperture to make a good exposed picture. The shutter speed is the speed of which the shutter opens and closes when you take a picture. You can put you camera on a tripod, put your shutter speed on 1 second, and take a better picture in the dark. Of course that’s only possible with objects that don’t move if you want a sharp picture.

In an SLR camera, which is the sort of camera I focus on, the shutter is part of a mirror. That mirror reflects the image into the film. You can actually see it if you take of you lens.

The camera on the picture is one I got just a few days ago, that’s why its dusty on the inside. I still need to clean it up and repair it. That’s why I can show you the mirror. If you take of your lens, note that it is not good for your camera to hold your camera the same way as on this picture. There is a possibility that dust, rain, or something else could come in there. Always hold the opening towards the ground the most of the time. (When you need to change the lens you should probably know this)

 

The shutter speed settings are on your camera. Most of the cameras have the following settings: B/1/2/4/8/15/30/60/125/250/500/1000/2000/4000. These numbers aren’t in seconds of course. The 1 is one second, the 2 is 1/2 second, the 500 is 1/500 second. So is 1/4000 a real quick shutter speed.

 

There has to be a lot of light to make a picture with such a quick shutter speed, cause there is not that much time for the light to expose the film. Though, a high shutter speed comes in very handy if you want to have a sharp picture. A picture taken with a low shutter speed has more chance that the object you’ve taken a picture of has moved and isn’t sharp.

The B setting is the setting you can use if you want your own shutter speed. You can wind your film and press the shutter button for as long as you want. the shutter will be oven as long as you hold your button down.

That is why aperture and shutter speed are so important and go hand in hand with each other to make a good exposed picture that is sharp too!

To make it more clear what shutter speed does, here is a picture of a falling object, taken with two deferent shutter speeds. I found it on the internet.

 

Now you know the 3 basics of analogue photography. But I’m not done yet! You’re now able to take a good sharp picture with your analogue camera. But what about the awesome double exposures, or redscales? I’m going to do a few more post on how to play with your settings to get some awesome (and maybe a bit weird) pictures from you camera!