Clicking in the manual mode of a DSLR camera can be quite frustrating if you don’t know the function of what you are dealing with. In a manual mode of any DSLR camera, you have the full freedom to play with the settings and explore new ways to tell the story. Today, we will look at the working of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Which I like to address as the three bosses of photography. If you are able to fully understand and master these three you will be able to take all types of pictures. Wheather be it long exposure, sports photography or portraits, you name it. So lets, start with shutter speed. Look at the shutter as a curtain in front of your camera sensor. The longer the curtain is left open, the more light will get to the camera sensor and the image will be blurred if the subject is continuously moving. Whereas, if the shutter closes at a very fast speed, I am talking in terms of part of a second. Then less light will reach the camera sensor resulting in low exposure and the subject will not be blurred even if it is continuously moving. Now that’s the common sense behind the working of a camera shutter. The question arises how to know which shutter speed to use in different situation. Let’s understand this by looking at some of the images.

Look at how the player is clicked mid-air and is in sharp focus. This was made possible with the shutter speed of 1/4000s i.e. 4000th part of a second.

Look at how the water flow is blurred. This was made possible with the shutter speed of 1/13 i.e. 13th part of a second. This particular type of photography is also known as long exposure photography and as the name suggests is possible with low shutter speed also known as long exposure. So looking at the examples, I hope you would have figured out that when shooting a fast moving subject like a sports man, train or water droplet. You will need a higher shutter speed. Whereas, when you are shooting a still subject like a fruit basket, product, etc you can have less shutter speed also. Usually, while on a low shutter speed, it is recommended to use a tripod. So that’s it for today. Hope you try out what you just learned and always feel free to share your work with me. Happy Clicking.