Shutter speed and aperture work together
to offer you more creativity

Now don't run away because of the digital camera terminology in the title! This page will hopefully help you with understanding how camera shutter speed and aperture work together to create correctly exposed photographs.

But perhaps you were looking for a chart to help you work out which aperture and shutter speed to use in certain situations? (Click here to view an exposure table that will help.)

Used carefully, the aperture and shutter speed settings on your digital camera can open up a world of creativity and help you take better digital photos.

fast-shutter-speed (17K) So what is shutter speed? Basically it is the length of time that the camera allows light to hit the sensor of the camera, thereby creating the image. Two main things help the camera (or you) decide which shutter speed to use for a particular shot: the size of the aperture and the amount of available light.

Let's turn our thoughts for a moment to a room in a house. If that room has a big picture window then lots of light is allowed into the room, however if it only has a tiny window the room will appear dingy and you may need to turn on the electric lights, even in the daytime. The window does the same job as the aperture of the lens in your digital camera, it allows light in. However, unlike a window, it can change size. If there is a lot of light outside, the camera lens aperture doesn't need to be as big as when the light levels are low.

So these three things work in harmony. The amount of light, the size of the aperture and the camera shutter speed. All work together to create the best exposure, producing a photograph that is neither too light or too dark.

Most point and shoot digital cameras take care of these settings for you automatically. All you need to do is pick a program setting and metering mode and then take the picture. So why do you need to learn about shutter speed and aperture? Can't you just let the camera get on with it and just concentrate on finding good photographic subjects?

If you just want to take snapshots of the family or holiday photos on the beach then you can ignore the rest of the page. But if you want to learn how to take better photos, read on.

Shutter speed and aperture examples

Let's start by looking at two situations where you may want to take a photograph; at a school sports day and on holiday surrounded by a beautiful landscape.

photographing-kids (24K) Fast shutter speed - large aperture At the sports day you want to capture the action and excitement while showing the "big picture".

In the photo, you can see that the children are running, by the position of their legs. You can also see other children in the background, thereby putting the two girls in the foreground into context, they are obviously taking part in a race not just running for the sake of it.

What part of the photograph do you see first? The two girls? This is because they are in focus and the other children are softly blurred and less visible. To get this effect I choose to use a fast shutter speed and a wide open aperture.

To get the maximum shutter speed I also increased the ISO rating which has given the photo a grainy appearance. The photo was converted to black and white as the colours in the boys striped teeshirt, in the background, were fighting for attention.

photographing-fall-foliage (32K) Slow shutter speed - small aperture

In contrast, for the landscape photograph, I wanted to get as much in focus as possible, from the fall foliage in the foreground to the farmhouse in the distance, so this time I picked a small aperture and a slow shutter speed.

I didn't need to stop any action so using a slower shutter speed didn't matter, but to get the best result I steadied the camera on a tripod to avoid camera shake.

Understanding shutter speed and aperture

What did you learn from the example photographs?

Well, they showed that sometimes shutter speed is more important than the aperture setting. And vice versa. It depends on what you are photographing and what effect you wish to achieve.

You perhaps also picked up on the fact that smaller lens apertures keep more of the photograph in focus, and bigger apertures can throw some areas out of focus.

How to set the shutter speed and aperture

Most cameras have a dial that you can turn to change the settings. Sometimes this just shows icons such as the automatic setting, a mountain range, a face, a flower and perhaps an M for manual. Other cameras have the letters P, A, S and M which relate to program, aperture, shutter and manual settings.

If you only have the icons, then setting your camera to the mountain range will allow you to take photos of landscapes where everything is in focus (small aperture), the face is the program to use for portraits (large aperture) where the background will be blurred and the flower is for close up photography.

The letters on the dial allow you to choose which shutter speed and aperture you want to use. The camera will then adjust the other setting for you automatically to give the correct exposure. By choosing the manual setting you will need to pick both settings, so this is perhaps better left for when you have more experience.

What do the numbers mean?

Shutter speeds are shown in seconds and parts of a second. A 1 second exposure is much longer than one of 1/250th of a second, or in other words the light is directed onto the sensor for a longer period. The best shutter speed for general photography is around 1/125th of a second. If you want to capture fast action change it to either 1/250 or 1/500th.

Apertures are measured in f stops. These numbers can be confusing when you are learning digital photography as they don't seem to follow a logical step progression. A small aperture would be f16 and a wide one, f2.8. The settings in between these can include f4, f5.6, f8 and f11. A practical aperture setting for portraits would be around f5.6 whereas for landscapes you would want to pick f11, f16 or even f22 if your camera has an aperture that small.

Have a go yourself!

Check your camera and its manual to see which system it offers to change the settings. Then try taking two or three photos of the same subject but change the settings each time. Try to pick something which has items at varying distances so that you can see the effect the aperture has on them. For your second set of shots photograph something that moves to find out which shutter speed freezes the action.

Start building your own photographic journal by printing your photos and including the details of the settings for each shot as I have done with the examples below.

shutter-speed-and-aperture (30K)