What shutter speeds are best for photography? Features of shooting at long exposures

Shutter speed is a great tool for perfecting exposure, controlling blur, and creating interesting effects. Discover what it is and how to use it.

There is an opinion that in mastering photography, one should concentrate on developing creative skills, and not on studying the technical side. However, there are some important technical elements, to master which is simply necessary to obtain good photos. Exposure is one of those elements.

Shutter speed is one of three elements (along with aperture and ISO speed) that determine exposure. Exposure determines how bright your photo will turn out, and also allows you to add a lot of creative effectors to your photo. Let's take a look at what an excerpt is, why it's so important, and how you can use it.

Exposure is an important tool in photography and must be learned.

What is exposure?

The camera shutter is a small shutter that sits directly in front of the sensor inside your camera. When you take a photo, this shutter opens and closes, as if letting in light, which affects the matrix, thereby forming an image. Shutter speed, i.e. Shutter speed is how fast the shutter opens and closes.

A fast shutter speed tells us that the shutter is opening for a short period of time; long exposure - for a long period.

How is exposure measured?

Shutter speed is measured in seconds or fractions of a second. For example, a shutter speed of 1/100 means 1/100th of a second, or 0.01 second. Shutter speed is also called exposure time, because shutter speed indicates the period of time during which light acts on the matrix.

Most cameras have a wide range of shutter speeds, from one thousandth of a second to several seconds. SLR cameras (single lens reflex cameras) also have a 'Bulb' mode that will keep the shutter open for as long as you want.

Best exposure

In auto mode, the camera tries to find the best shutter speed to capture the scene you want. Unfortunately, she doesn't always succeed, and photos can come out underexposed (dark) or blurry.

The best solution would be to move the camera to manual mode and determine the shutter speed yourself, taking into account the following.

Camera shake

Camera shake occurs when you hold the camera in your hands. It doesn't matter if you think you're holding it steady, because perfect stability can't be achieved anyway. This results in blurry or fuzzy photos.

Handheld photography causes camera shake and motion blur.

You can compensate for camera shake by using a fast shutter speed. This is most noticeable when using lenses with longer focal lengths - the longer focal length, the faster the shutter speed should be to compensate for camera shake.

There is a rule according to which the slowest shutter speed should be equal to 1 / focal length of the lens. For example, for a 200 mm lens, you should use a shutter speed no slower than 1/200 sec. This takes into account the effective focal length of the lens, which is determined by multiplying the focal length by the crop factor of the camera.

motion blur

Motion blur happens when you photograph moving subjects such as a runner. If you use a slow shutter speed, the slider will move across the frame while the shutter is open, resulting in a blurry streak in the final image.

Use a fast shutter speed to eliminate blur, or use a slow shutter speed to capture movement more creatively.

You can eliminate blur from a photo by using a fast shutter speed. This will mean that the subject will move less while the shutter is open, thus reducing the blur effect. With a sufficiently fast shutter speed, the blur becomes invisible and the action seems to be “frozen”.

But before lowering the shutter speed, you should consider whether you really want to eliminate blur. After all, this is a great way to convey speed and movement. You can also take a panoramic shot, i.e. move the camera after the subject, keeping it in focus and blurring the background.

exposition

You also need to make sure the exposure is set correctly. A slower shutter speed lets in more light than a shorter shutter speed. The challenge is to choose a shutter speed that allows just the right amount of light to come in, so that the image isn't too bright (overexposed) or too dark (underexposed) and all the important parts of the scene are adequately lit.

Choosing the right shutter speed is important to get a perfect exposure with good highlights and shadows.

But do not forget that exposure is not only shutter speed, but also aperture and ISO number. It's good practice to choose a shutter speed that produces the desired amount of blur (if required) and then choose the appropriate aperture and ISO to get the correct exposure.

Creative Effects

By using very fast or very long exposures, you can achieve interesting creative effects.

Taking photographs at very slow shutter speeds (from a few seconds to several minutes) allows you to make, for example, the effect of blurry clouds, giving the effect of fog to moving water, or to get light trails from moving cars or stars.

Very slow shutter speeds are used for interesting abstract effects such as misty soft water.

Conversely, if you use a very fast shutter speed, you can "freeze" such beautiful movements as, for example, the flight of birds, an athlete during sports, or the splashing of water. It takes a lot of practice and learning to learn how to take these shots, but once the technique is mastered, the photos look amazing.

To freeze motion, use a very fast shutter speed.

The effects that can be obtained by varying the shutter speed are countless. Don't be afraid to experiment and use settings you've never used before - you never know what will bring freshness to ordinary everyday objects.

The best way to learn shutter speed is to put your camera in manual or shutter priority mode and practice. Pay attention to how certain exposures affect the photo, what effects they bring to the image, so that you can then use this experience to bring your photographs to life in a fundamental way. new level creativity.

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While this word may seem unfamiliar and even intimidating to some, we encounter exposure every time we take a picture of something. because exposure is the total luminous flux that hits the matrix during the exposure time.

If the matrix got too little light, then such a frame will turn out to be too dark, that is, underexposed or underexposed. Here is an example of such a frame:

Comments, as they say, are unnecessary. The first desire that arises when viewing this photo is to lighten it up! But, trying to add brightness, we will inevitably encounter a loss of quality. In dark places (shadows), the matrix received such a small luminous flux that information about the color of these fragments is partially or completely absent.

When trying to brighten an underexposed image, we get a guaranteed distortion of shades in the shadows, as well as high level color noise.

On the contrary, if the matrix received too much luminous flux, then the photo turns out to be too light, that is, overexposed or overexposed. Overexposure is an even greater evil than underexposure. If an underexposed picture can somehow be corrected in Adobe Photoshop, then it is much more difficult to save an overexposed image, and in many cases it is completely impossible. With underlight, we have a lack of information about dark areas. However, the information is there. There is simply no information about the color in the overexposed area - the processing program perceives it simply as an absolutely white section of the picture. And no matter how perfect the image processing algorithms are, none of them will be able to "invent" those details that were lost during overexposure.

Below is an example of an overexposed image.

The picture shows that the hull of the yacht has lost all the details and has become just a white speck. As we will not try to darken it, the lost details will not return back.

These two examples show that when photographing, you need to somehow strike a balance between overexposure and underexposure, that is, ensure the correct exposure. In this case, the photo will be balanced in highlights and shadows and will look its best.

How to ensure the correct exposure?

The exposure is set by three parameters:

Excerpt

Diaphragm

ISO sensitivity

Excerpt- this is the time period when the camera shutter is open and the matrix receives a light flux. The longer the shutter speed, the more light flux the matrix receives, the brighter the photo is.

Diaphragm- this is a mechanical "pupil" of the lens, which can open and close, thereby changing the intensity of the light flux falling on the matrix. When the aperture is open (dilated pupil), the luminous flux is maximum, when the aperture is closed (constricted pupil), it is minimal.

ISO sensitivity- the degree of susceptibility of the matrix to light. Changing this parameter allows the matrix not to "blind" from daylight(for this you need to set low sensitivity) and do not suffer " night blindness"in a dark room and take pictures in it without a flash (for this you need to increase the sensitivity).

These three parameters set the exposure.

If we draw a parallel between these seemingly complex things and our everyday life I offer a very clear example. Suppose we have a glass and we need to fill it with tap water. This can be done in two ways - turn on the pressure more powerfully and fill the glass in 1 second, or draw water in a thin stream for a minute. In this case, a glass is a matrix cell, water is a luminous flux, a tap is a diaphragm (the wider the hole, the stronger flow). And the time it takes to fill the glass is exposure. But if we fail to fill the glass in the allotted time - the only way to comply with all the "formalities" is to reduce the volume of the glass. A glass twice as small will fill up twice as fast. Thus, the glass volume is the reciprocal of the sensitivity. Less volume (glass fills faster) - higher sensitivity (you can shoot with a faster shutter speed).

So, what needs to be done so that the glass is filled "up to the rim", that is, the photo is correctly exposed?

Exposure must be measured first

In modern cameras, all this trinity of parameters can be set automatically. In most cases, automation works flawlessly, so many do not even think about setting something up and changing something. But in a number of cases, the automation does not work correctly and we begin to look for the cause ... After reading the instructions for the camera, we find out that automatic metering operates according to one of several algorithms. Each of them is "sharpened" under different conditions lighting. Here are the main types of exposure metering algorithm...

Integral (matrix) metering
Partial and spot metering
Center-weighted metering

What is the difference between them and which mode is better to use? Let's look at the table...

	Integral (matrix) metering	Partial, spot metering	Center-weighted metering
Measurement area	Exposure data is taken from the entire area of the matrix and averaged. Based on this "arithmetic mean", shutter speed and aperture are set.	Exposure data is taken only from a small area in the center of the frame (with partial metering, the area is larger, with spot metering, the area is smaller). Illumination at the edges of the frame has no effect on exposure calculation	Exposure data is taken from the entire frame, but the area in the center has the most weight. The closer a point is to the edge of the frame, the less of an effect it has on the final exposure.
When is the best time to apply	The main mode for shooting when the illumination in the frame is more or less uniform and there are no objects that are strongly "knocked out" from the overall tone.	When the key object in its illumination is very different from the general background and it must be well developed. An example is a portrait of a man in dark clothes against a dark background.	As a rule, according to the result, the result differs little from the integral measurement. However, when shooting contrasting scenes more attention is given to the exposure of the central part of the frame.
When not to use	If the brightness of a small object differs significantly from the brightness of the background, there is a risk that the object will either be overexposed or underexposed. In this case, it is better to use partial or spot metering.	It is not known what got into the small measurement area - white snow or dark branches. The result is an almost unpredictable exposure level when shooting "motley" scenes.	There are no obvious restrictions, you need to look at the situation. It is important to remember that sometimes it is impossible to work out both light and dark areas at the same time. If the difference in illumination between objects is too large, then we use additional lighting(for portrait) or shooting in HDR (landscape).

After measuring the exposure, the automatic device sets the exposure couple - shutter speed and aperture. Numbers appear in the camera viewfinder, for example:

This means that the shutter speed is 1/250 second, the aperture is 8. The device is ready to shoot, we just have to press the shutter button!

Exposure can be adjusted...

It happens that automatic metering is wrong and the photo has a slight overexposure or underexposure. In this case, you can correct the exposure metering and reshoot the scene so that the next frame is normally exposed. But here's the question - how to determine if there is an error in the exposure on the captured frame? Indeed, on a small LCD screen, often with less than perfect color reproduction, there is little to see! And here a wonderful function comes to our aid - viewing the histogram.

A histogram is a graph showing the distribution of brightness in a photograph.

Here is an example of a still image and its histogram:

In this case, you can see that the histogram "rests" on the left edge - this means that there are underexposed objects in the photo that look on the verge of blackness. At the same time, you can see that there is some free space to the right of the graph. To get rid of the underlight, let's try to correct the exposure by +1/3EV (this is equivalent to the fact that we increase the shutter speed "by 1 click of the wheel", that is, by 1/3 of a step).

To enter exposure compensation, we need to find a button on the camera with the following icon:

Keeping this button pressed, turn the control wheel, or press the joystick (different devices have different ways). The screen will display a slider that can be moved left or right:

If you move the slider to the right, the picture will be brighter (positive exposure compensation), if you move it to the left, it will be darker (negative exposure compensation).

Here is a variation of the previous shot taken with positive exposure compensation.

We see that the picture brightened a little, the shadows on it improved. The histogram moved slightly to the right. If you make a big correction, then the shadows will be worked out even better, but the clouds will be overexposed, that is, they will lose their shades and go white. In this case, the histogram will shift even more to the right and will be "cut off" from the side of the highlights. Thus, we derive an important rule:

Ideally, the histogram should not appear clipped either on the left or on the right. If the histogram is clipped on the left, there are underexposed areas in the photo and there is loss of information in the shadows. If the histogram is cropped on the right, then the photo is losing hues in the light areas.

Sometimes a situation arises when the histogram rests both to the right and to the left - in this case, the image loses details in the shadows and in the highlights at the same time.

Questions and tasks for self-control

What types of metering do you have on your camera?
Experiment with exposure metering modes. Which scenes are better obtained in the integral metering mode, which - in the spot or partial mode?
Find out how your camera's exposure compensation function is enabled.
Take pictures of the same scene with positive and negative exposure compensation, follow the changes in the histogram.

photo simulator

Practice setting up a "virtual" camera - set the shutter speed, aperture, ISO sensitivity and try to get clear photos.

Shutter speed (shutter speed) is the amount of time the shutter remains open and light hits the film or digital sensor. The right combination exposure settings - shutter speed, aperture and ISO - allows you to get rich, clear and contrasting pictures. Learn to expose desired speed shutter, and the quality of your photos will improve.

Steps

Part 1

What is exposure

Understand shutter and shutter speed. The shutter is a device in the camera that controls the amount of light entering the camera. When you take a photo, it opens for a short time, and the camera sensor hits a certain amount of Sveta. The shutter then closes again, obstructing the light.

Shutter speed is the amount of time the shutter stays open. In other words, this is the length of time during which light falls on the camera sensor. Usually it is only a fraction of a second.

Learn how shutter speed is measured. Exposure is measured in seconds and their fractions. Its value can vary from 1/8000 to several seconds. Most often, shutter speeds of 1/60 or shorter are used.

Understand the difference between short and long exposures. In order to choose the right shutter speed for a particular situation, you first need to know what a fast and slow shutter speed is (high or low shutter speed). The value of 1/60 is usually considered borderline.

Find the shutter priority mode in the settings. Most cameras allow you to shoot with shutter priority. This means that you choose the shutter speed depending on the shooting conditions and artistic intent, and the camera automatically selects the corresponding aperture value.

Consider focal length. The longer the focal length of the lens, the more sensitive to shock. Therefore, it must be taken into account when choosing a shutter speed. If you are shooting with a telephoto lens, you should use a slower shutter speed.
- In the shutter speed, the denominator must be at least equal to or greater than the focal length. For example, a 50 mm lens can be shot handheld at a shutter speed of no more than 1/50 second, a 200 mm lens - no more than 1/200 second.
Part 2
Choosing a shutter speed
1. Choose a shutter speed at which stationary objects will not be blurred. The main thing you need to achieve when taking photos is to avoid camera shake. Use a fast shutter speed so the image doesn't come out blurry. For this type of photo, try setting it to at least 1/60. If you have strong hands and you can keep the camera still, good result It will work with a shutter speed of 1/30.
  - In this case, changing the shutter speed won't make much of a difference, apart from changing the overall exposure settings, unless there's movement during the exposure that blurs the image by at least a pixel. But even then the picture will be only slightly less sharp. A real difference will be visible only with a noticeable movement (concussion).
  - The image stabilizer built into the lens or camera will allow you to slow down the shutter speed by a step or two when shooting handheld. This also contributes to a stronger grip on the camera.
  - By mounting the camera on a tripod or other fixed support, you will get rid of shake, which is especially important when shooting with slow shutter speeds.
2. Choose a fast shutter speed to freeze the moment of movement in the frame. To set the shutter speed, you must decide whether you are shooting a still or moving subject. To shoot a subject in motion, the shutter speed should be fast.

Shutter speed is the most understandable and obvious of the three factors that affect exposure and is capable of creating the most noticeable effects. If you don't know what shutter speed is, you may end up with blurry or smeared photos. This lesson will teach you how to choose the right shutter speed for different situations, as well as how to use it to create creative effects.

Step 1 - What is exposure in photography?

Without going into unnecessary detail about how the shutter works, shutter speed is the amount of time the shutter opens. If you use a shutter speed slower than the specified one, you will get blurry pictures in most cases. Shutter speed controls exposure stops just like aperture, only much simpler. since the dependence in this case is directly proportional. For example, to reduce the exposure by half, you need to cut the shutter speed in half, say from 1/200 to 1/400 of a second.

Step 2 - Motion Blur and Freeze.

Assuming you're not taking blurry photos for creative effect, you'll need to choose a fast enough shutter speed (fast shutter speed) to prevent blurring. Blurring also depends on the focal length of the lens. A telephoto lens requires a faster shutter speed because even the slightest camera movement will be amplified by the lens. A wide-angle lens can work with slower shutter speeds.

As a rule, the average person can take a sharp, blur-free picture if you set the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the focal length. For example, to take a picture at a focal length of 30 mm, you need to set the shutter speed to no longer than 1/30 sec. If it is longer. then the probability of getting a blurry or smeared image will increase significantly. However, it is worth noting that this applies to a full-frame camera. if the camera sensor is smaller, then the shutter speed should be shortened by the crop factor. For example, for a crop factor of 1.5, the shutter speed will be 1/45 s.

There are exceptions to the rule, for example, if the lens has an image stabilization system that allows you to use much slower shutter speeds. As you learn how to handle your camera, you will gradually improve your skills, such as the ability to properly hold the camera in different situations, then you can do sharp shots and for more long exposures.

Here is an example of creative motion blur

Freezing

Freezing is much easier to do when shooting. This happens when shooting at very fast shutter speeds (1/500 sec or faster). Such a shutter speed freezes any movement, and the photo is clear, without the slightest blur. Personally, I don't like shooting at such fast shutter speeds, as the photo will come out flat. Instead, when shooting fast-moving subjects, I try to include some movement, otherwise the subject looks unnaturally frozen in place. This is shown in the bottom picture, the object seems to be hovering in the air.

Step 3 - Proper Exposure for Different Situations

Fast shutter speed for telephoto

Since the photo below was taken with a telephoto lens, it was important to use a fast shutter speed (1/500). If you had a tripod, you could use any shutter speed and cable release to prevent camera shake. A tripod allows you to keep the camera still.

Shooting moving subjects in low light conditions.

When you are filming a subject in low light, such as a concert, the performers are more likely to be moving around the stage. In this case, there is a contradiction between using a fast shutter speed and low light. In this case, you need to use the most open aperture and high ISO, which allows you to shoot without moving.

Step 4. Creative use of shutter speed

Creative blur.

By using remote control shutter release and a tripod to hold the camera still, you can play with the shutter speed and create interesting blurry, out of the box photos.

Adding a flash to a photo with a blur lets you freeze some subjects, which means you can move the camera around for an artistic effect.

Pan

Panning is a technique where you move the camera following a moving object, resulting in a blurred background and a sharp object. This picture was taken from a moving car that was traveling at the same speed as the train.

painting with light

To paint with light, you need a slow shutter speed and a light source. This photo was taken at a shutter speed of 30 seconds, during which I moved and shone a flash on the beach houses. This method is excellent for shooting at night and allows you to add light there. where do you want to go.

A slow shutter speed, combined with the movement of a small constant light source, allows you to add a graffiti effect to the image.

Because this photo was taken at night, I used a slow shutter speed and a tripod to get a decent exposure. You can also place the camera on a flat, fixed surface.

This photo required a long exposure, but for a different reason. I had to wait for a passing car to get into the frame, it took a sufficient amount of time. It took me about half an hour to find the best camera position and shooting angle before I got the final image.

Shutter speed is the amount of time it takes the camera to take a picture. different meanings hold will help create cool effects, capture movement, convey dynamics in a photo. So let's start to disassemble everything on the points below. Go!

The concept of endurance

When we shoot, the light is read by the film or the camera's matrix. While the shooting process itself has not begun, the matrix or film is closed with a shutter. As soon as we begin to photograph, the shutter opens so that the matrix or film can take the image. Shutter speed is the time the shutter is closed.

Exposure measurement

It is measured in fractions of a second or in seconds and is indicated: 1/8000 s, 1/1000 s, 1/125 s, 1 s, 2 s, and so on. For example, a shutter speed of 1/100 means one hundredth of a second (0.01 s). Therefore, shutter speed is also called exposure time - it is during this period of time that light acts on the matrix. Most cameras provide wide selection possible values shutter speeds ranging from a few thousandths of a second to several seconds. SLR cameras, as a rule, have a “Bulb” mode, which allows you to keep the shutter open for as long as necessary.

Shutter setting

You can manually change the camera shutter speed only in two modes: manual “M” and shutter priority “Tv”. For this:

Switch to the desired mode, find the field with the shutter speed value
Turn the wheel and watch the exposure settings change
Ready! Just experiment

Short exposure

A fast shutter speed captures the moment, capturing the scene in a fraction of a second. We use it to shoot those objects that we want to capture in motion. It can be sports events or children's parties, a variety of dynamic scenes. It is also used for shooting objects: static and moving. With static, everything is simple - the amount of light that enters the frame depends on the shutter speed, as in a photograph with roses. If the subject or photographer is moving, we just need the fastest shutter speed possible. A fast shutter speed will allow you to achieve a high-quality image without any blurring. A short shutter speed is considered to be up to 1 second.

Long exposure

Long exposure does not capture the moment, but shows its continuation, dynamics, movement. It is used in low light conditions, great for shooting in the evening and at night, shooting indoors. Long exposure requires the use of a quality tripod. But you should not indulge in long exposure, because there is a threat of noise in the picture. Long exposure is considered to be from 1 second. The longer we take the shutter speed, the more blurred the movement will be.

The most popular long exposure effects are:

Fire lane. As already mentioned, we shoot only from a tripod, even minimal jitter will spoil the photo (it will be smeared) and we use a cable or a timer to release the shutter. In order for the expressive effect of movement to be more beautiful in a photograph, some scenes need to be shot at a very slow shutter speed and at a low ISO value (for example, 100 or 200 ISO). In extreme cases, if the subject is not drawn well enough in the frame, the sensitivity can be slightly increased - up to 400 ISO units.

By using an ND filter, which increases the exposure time, you can also do cool pictures sea surf, waterfalls, where the water looks like loose sand or a cloud. The best example is actually water. When photographing at a slow shutter speed, the water is obtained in the form of a smooth stream, and when photographing at a short shutter speed, it “freezes”, and even individual drops can be seen.

If you follow a moving subject with a shutter speed of 1/60, the background will be blurred, but the subject will not.

At a shutter speed of ¼, you get charming pictures of rain: drops appear in lingering lines.

The night city and its lights can be captured using a shutter speed of 30 seconds.

Camera shake

When we hold the camera in our hands, shaking appears. No matter how stable you think you are, you still cannot stand completely static, and the smallest movements will appear in the pictures as blur and lack of sharpness.

To avoid camera shake, you can use a fast shutter speed. This is especially important when using long lenses, because the longer the focal length of the lens, the more you need to speed up the shutter speed to eliminate jitter.

As a general rule, the slowest possible shutter speed will be 1/(focal length of the lens) second. For example, for a 200 mm lens, use at least a shutter speed of 1/200.