Niece reminded me to adjust my shutter speed.  Well, I was proud just to know that I had to move my camera’s dial to S, for shutter priority mode, to do that.  But beyond that, I had not a clue.  She suggested that I try setting it to about 1/400.  “More than that will be too dark,” she said.

Isn’t she smart?

Shutter Speed

Now, shutter speed is measured in seconds.  1/400 means that the shutter is open for 1/400th of a second.  That’s not long, especially considering that most of my pictures are taken at less than 1/200 shutter speed.

Since the shutter is only open for such a short time, whatever is being photographed does not have time to move much.  Therefore, the picture has much less blur arising from movement.  That also means that there is less time to bring light into the picture.

If the amount of light coming into the picture is low, you need to have plenty of natural light or be close enough to your subject for a flash to work.  Otherwise, you’re going to end up with a super dark picture with no blur!

When I took my shots, it was close to dusk and a storm was blowing in.  So, my pictures weren’t as bright as I would have liked.  But isn’t this image of BigGirl in mid-air surprisingly free of blur?

Shot taken using Shutter Priority Mode on Digital SLR

 My camera has a setting for taking action shots like this – it looks like a man running.  I tried that setting just to compare its results to the pictures I took at 1/400.  The shutter time my camera selected in this mode was way quicker than 1/400 – the pictures were so dark that I deleted them before I ever considered posting them here for comparison or noting the shutter speed.

I probably won’t do anything special with the shot above. It’s only so-so in the grand scheme of things.  But I did learn a valuable lesson in how to get better shots in less-than-easy shooting conditions.  Thanks Niece!