In shutter mode you have total control over the speed of the shutter. You set the speed depending on what you are trying to achieve and the camera makes decisions for the other parts of the exposure triangle – ISO and APERTURE.
If you want to capture something static select a fast shutter speed and the moving object should be caught nice and still – if you’ve set it fast enough.
If you want to portray movement then slow the shutter speed down and you get motion blur of moving objects in the image.
Depending on what you select the camera will choose the aperture and ISO to suit the available light in order to attempt to capture a balanced, well-lit image. It can’t always do it right but it tries to do a good job using the information it has by sampling the scene.
Other factors will come in to play too and if you’re looking for a pin sharp image you should always be using a tripod and perhaps a remote to minimise camera shake. But that’s for another day.
To use this setting, turn the mode wheel of your camera to ‘S’ and then there is another wheel (usually near the picture trigger) to rotate to change the speed of the shutter. Remember it is shown on the camera display as either a number in seconds – 1″ is 1 second, 5″ is 5 seconds, etc. Alternatively for speeds of less than a second it is shown as a fraction – 1/2 is half a second, 1/8 is an eighth of a second, etc.
This image from the centre of Bangkok, Thailand had the shutter speed dialled in (2 seconds) and the camera decided that the aperture should be f6.3.
Depending on the camera make and model you can range from something like 1/10,000 of a second right up to 30 seconds. Beyond that there is something called ‘BULB’ mode where the shutter stays open for as long as you keep the picture trigger button pressed.
More on that in a separate section but essentially BULB mode takes exposures and shutter lengths to extreme times – above 30 seconds into minutes and in some cases hours. In this mode the shutter stays open for as long as the shutter button (or remote release) is depressed but be wary – this can dramatically drain the camera’s battery as these long exposures can demand a lot of juice!
