Introduction
Let's discover what the shutter speed is in photography and how it can be used to shoot better photos. Every photograph needs an ideal exposure time; let's find out which one!
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What the Shutter Speed Is
In photography, there are two parameters that influence the shot the most: shutter speed and aperture. In this guide, we'll focus on shutter speed. When we press the shutter button, we allow light to reach the camera sensor, exposing it. The longer the sensor remains open, the greater the amount of light that reaches it.
In this guide we’ll talk about shutter speed. If you’d like more information about the aperture in photography, we invite you to read the page we wrote on the topic:
The way shutter speed affects the shot is mostly motion blur. Anyone who has tried to take a photo in low light, without using a flash or a stable support, will have noticed that the photo turns out blurry.
This happens because, during the time the sensor is exposed to light, even the slightest movement of the camera or the subject is recorded as a "trail," creating an effect known as motion blur or micro-blur. The latter is simply a very slight form of motion blur.
What is normally considered a flaw can sometimes become a feature. Remember that motion blur is not always a sign of a bad photo; sometimes, in creative photography, it can even be a desired effect. Think of waterfall photos, the ones with the water looking like mist, or panning shots of vehicles or fast-moving subjects, or the photos where lights become trails of light. As always, the only limit is your creativity.
Although sometimes long exposures and motion blur can be a pleasant stylistic choice, most of the photos you take should be as sharp as possible. And here's where the problems begin. Any lens has its maximum sharpness two or three stops above its minimum aperture. If you've read our guide on aperture, you'll know that the higher the f-number, the longer the shutter speed required. As we've already seen, a longer shutter speed increases the likelihood of blurry images... it's a vicious cycle.
As always, you need to evaluate the situation: for sports photography, fast shutter speeds are always preferable, even at the expense of some depth of field and sharpness. On the contrary, in landscape photography with a tripod, shutter speeds are generally kept longer to achieve the best possible sharpness. You can always increase the ISO sensitivity, but beyond a certain point, noise becomes too strong. Let's try to understand which shutter speeds are recommended for some of the different types of photography you might find yourself shooting.
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Recommended Shutter Speeds
General Photography: A rather empirical rule says that the shutter speed needed to avoid camera shake when shooting handheld should be roughly equal to the focal length. Let's see what that means: if you are shooting with a 50 mm lens, with a steady hand, 1/60 of a second is enough; if you have a 300 mm telephoto lens, you should use at least 1/250.
We think this estimate is too optimistic, and we prefer to play it safe with faster speeds, especially with telephoto lenses. Your camera may also be an APS-C, unless you spent thousands of euros on a full-frame body. In this case, the equivalent focal length is higher (1.5× on Nikon, 1.6× on Canon).
If you have a 300 mm mounted on a Canon 7D, the lens will actually behave like a 480 mm, so remember that you shouldn't use 1/250, but rather 1/500. In this case, to be safe, shoot at 1/1000, and you'll be fine.
Sports Photography: in sports photography, shutter speeds must be very fast. In just a few hundredths of a second, subjects move significantly, so it is recommended to use at least 1/1000. Even better, stay around 1/2000 to avoid motion blur. The problem you will encounter in this type of photography is that events are often held indoors, in arenas or stadiums.
In this case, there is no real solution other than buying a fast lens. If you don't want to use higher ISO settings, you'll have to consider a lens with at least f/2.8 and very fast autofocus. The problem is that those features tend to skyrocket the price of the lens.
Night Photography: generally, with film cameras, it was possible to have exposures lasting several hours. Digital sensors, however, struggle a lot when shutter speeds become too long, as various types of digital noise appear mostly due to sensor overheating. Personally, I recommend avoiding exposures longer than 30 seconds, whenever possible.
Star Photography: when photographing the night sky, you must consider what you want to achieve. If you want to capture the stars as sharp points, the key parameter is focal length. An ultra-wide lens (8-10 mm) allows you to use shutter speeds up to 30 seconds. As the focal length increases, you must shorten the exposure. The proportion is mathematical: with a 50 mm lens, the shutter speed must be five times shorter, about 6 seconds. If you want to create star trails, shutter speeds become much longer, exceeding thirty minutes. Usually, software is used to blend multiple photos, since digital sensors overheat with excessively long exposures.
Photographing Water: if you want a photo with perfectly frozen water, you should stay around 1/500. If you want a sense of motion, even at 1/30 you will start to see slight streaking. From 1/3 onward, the effect becomes increasingly visible. If you want to photograph rain, 1/60 of a second is the best shutter speed to capture raindrops at the right length.
Macro Photography: in handheld macro photography, it's often necessary to use smaller apertures to achieve sufficient depth of field. Still, you should try to keep a shutter speed of at least 1/200, preferably 1/500. The only solution is to increase the ISO.
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Reducing Shutter Speeds
There are four "friends" that allow us to obtain perfectly sharp images even when shooting conditions force us to use longer shutter speeds: a support, image stabilization, ISO sensitivity, and the flash.
The tripod, as you surely know, is a stable support that eliminates all camera movement. If, for example, you want to try your hand at landscape photography, the best results will be obtained when the sun is low on the horizon (sunrise and sunset).
Of course, these are also the situations with the least light. When shooting a landscape, we should also prefer an aperture that gives us the greatest possible sharpness and depth of field (f/11 is the sweet spot on fullframe as a rule of thumb). As we've already seen, stopping down the aperture increases sharpness but results in longer shutter speeds, increasing the risk of motion blur.
The only solution is to place the camera on a solid support or, even better, on a tripod. This will allow you to leave the shutter open for as long as necessary without any camera movement. After all, we can assume that in those few tenths of a second the landscape will remain still, at least if there's no wind. I recommend choosing a quality tripod; don't buy the cheaper model. The tripod must be as solid as possible. It's common to hang a weight under the tripod if it isn't stable enough.
Another solution for photography with relatively long shutter speeds is to use a stabilized lens, which should allow us to obtain a sharp photo even when shutter speeds become slightly longer. However, one downside of this technology is that even the best stabilizer tends to make the image slightly softer compared to using a tripod, and if the subject is moving, you won't be able to freeze it.
Obviously, between the two, if you have a tripod available, don't hesitate. Choose the tripod. If you're shooting in very low light (night or almost), there is no way to achieve decent results without a solid support.
In both previous cases, the result will be satisfactory, but there is one variable that nullifies the benefits of good stability: moving subjects. A photo taken in a dimly lit environment can be perfectly sharp, but if the subject you are capturing is moving, there is only one way to avoid motion blur without using the flash: raising the ISO.
ISO sensitivity is a forced amplification of the sensor that increases its sensitivity. This allows us to drastically reduce shutter speeds, but of course there is a downside: noise. The higher the sensitivity, the higher the noise. Noise appears as a "graininess" in the photo. Personally, I don't like the effect produced with high ISO, but in certain situations we'll be forced to increase sensitivity. A noisy photo is always better than a missed one.
The increase in sensitivity is mathematical: if at ISO 100 the shutter speed is 1 second, at ISO 200 it will be half a second (1/2), at ISO 400 it will be a quarter of a second (1/4), and so on.
The last solution to mention is the flash, which is nothing more than a very powerful white light that fires in sync with the shutter. Normally, the faster shutter speed with flash is limited to 1/200 of a second.
There would actually be a lot more to say about flash use: guide numbers, first and second curtain sync, and so on. However, since this guide focuses only on shutter speeds, we will avoid going into detail on this topic.
Conclusion
We hope you liked this page about shutter speeds in photography. Before saying goodbye, we would suggest you read our home page, with all the articles we wrote about Cortina d'Ampezzo.
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