I got my head shaved Today we'll be talking about blur how to use it artistically and how to completely avoid it using shutter speed Shutter speed is part one of the trifecta of photography settings and it's the easiest to comprehend: it has two main functions It can let more light in or less light in, making the picture darker or brighter But also as a bonus. It is the only setting that can either freeze time or Blur a motion it is the time stone of the photo world what is a shutter? You don't have to know too much about the physicality of it. all that you need to know is that there is a curtain in Front of the camera that is always closed when you press the shutter button it opens temporarily Exposing the camera's sensor to the light coming through the lens it then closes right after, blocking any further light from seeping in how long that sensor is exposed is known as exposure time, but that sounds too much like radiation So we'll just stick with shutter speed Shutter speed is how long the sensor was exposed it is essentially the length of time the sensor was exposed to the outside world You'll see it denoted by numbers like 1/200, 1/4000 or even 1/2 These are all fractions of a second. If it's more than 1 second You'll see it denoted by 1" 2" That just means one or two seconds The easiest way to demonstrate, is to listen to the sound this is 1/50th This is one tenth of a second this is half of a second and This is two seconds You can shoot up to 30 seconds with most DSLRs, which is great for night photography Just make sure you use a tripod You can shoot the stars or even the Milky Way if you have the right equipment Shutter speed can freeze time in place it's great for sports, birds, apples, water droplets and my two favorites: hair tosses and levitation photos moving objects will be the sharpest if you use a faster shutter speed but Faster shutter speed will mean less time for the sensor to receive light here's an example of what happens when we increase shutter speed without changing any other settings the pics get increasingly darker as predicted if we go outside on a bright day, however, it doesn't matter as much. We can go as fast as our cameras will allow and we'll still get decent results When the shutter is open longer, we get a brighter picture But we get motion blur: any moving object will appear blurred here. Is that same picture again with a faster shutter speed It's hard to guess exactly what the picture will look like it's something unpredictable, but in the end It's right if we know how to use it correctly for an artistic effect we can make parts of the body blurry by moving them and Other parts sharp by staying completely still this is useful if you want to show a sense of speed To get a better sense of the effect, let's play with my balls At one five hundredth of a second, It's almost sharp half that and we can see some blur at one sixtieth It looks like an egg and at 120th. It doesn't even look round anymore This is motion blur not to be confused with camera shake when the camera is shaky due to human error The whole photo is blurry But motion blur, unlike camera shake, has a large portion of the image still in focus... only the moving object is blurred This is because we're using a tripod and the camera itself does not move In order to show a visual representation of motion we need a static reference point to stay completely still and have our moving object move through that space By having the majority of the photo stationary the objects movement really stands out Otherwise, it's just a blurry mess So how do we avoid camera shake? Well for one, we can use a tripod to be on the safe side an old guideline is the reciprocal rule photo lingo terminology Whatever lens you're using Will determine your minimum safe shutter speed so for a 50 mm lens You'll want to use at least 1/50 for an 85 millimeter lens, you'll want to use at least one over 80 200 millimeter will be way more shaky because it's a lot more zoomed in, shoot at least at 1/200 how to change shutter speed There are two main ways to adjust shutter speed and we have to get out of auto mode either manual, if you are already familiar with the other two settings or shutter priority On Nikon camera, it's s for shutter and on Canon cameras. It's TV for "time value" in this mode You can fool around with just the shutter speed while the camera does the rest So now that you know how to play with shutter speed? Here's a personal challenge Go out there! Freeze a motion the human eye can't see throw things in the air, make them levitate or shoot some birds in mid-flight Then do the opposite and shoot something completely slow intentionally showing motion blur the easiest thing to do is to get a tripod Go outside by the street where the cars are going by and catch those streaking lights as the cars drive by Or if you're lucky enough to have a thunderstorm rolling in this is how you get those lightning crashes photos Just set the shutter speed to 30 seconds and point it towards some buildings hopefully you'll get lucky and you're pointing it the right way if you want to follow along I recommend playing with shutter speed for at least a week to get a sense of where your blur limits are so anyhoo to conclude with Shutter speed we can freeze time by shooting really fast or we can slow down time by shooting at a low shutter speed and blurring a motion If you got your camera on you right now. Here is a quick test you could do to differentiate between Motion blur and camera shake Set your shutter speed really low say 1/4 of a second spin in a circle Camera facing out to see camera shake everything should be blurry But you'll see horizontal lines now face the camera towards you, selfie style, and spin again this time You're in focus while everything else is moving just think of that Titanic spinning scene Make sure to LIKE and subscribe because we're gonna cover all the major camera settings in this series, and you don't want the miss one so go get out there go for a nature walk and go shoot some water, but Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to don't go chasing cascading water near steep inclines It's dangerous Whoo You
