Skip to main content

Shutter Speed Basics

Lesson 7 from: Fundamentals of Photography

John Greengo

Shutter Speed Basics

Lesson 7 from: Fundamentals of Photography

John Greengo

most popular photo & video

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2200+ more >

Lesson Info

7. Shutter Speed Basics

Summary (Generated from Transcript)

The lesson is about understanding shutter speeds in photography. The instructor explains that shutter speeds are listed in fractions of a second and not whole numbers, and he gives examples of different shutter speeds and their corresponding exposure times. He also discusses the concept of full stops and how they affect the amount of light in a photograph. The instructor explains the history of the EV (Exposure Value) Scale and how it relates to changing shutter speeds. He also mentions the option to set third stops in some cameras and explains the use of X-SYNC and bulb settings. The lesson concludes by discussing the technical and aesthetic reasons for choosing different shutter speeds in photography.

Q&A:

  1. What are some common misconceptions about shutter speeds in photography?

    Some people get confused about the fractions used to represent shutter speeds and may think larger fractions indicate longer exposure times, when in fact the opposite is true.

  2. What are full stops and how do they affect the amount of light in a photograph?

    Full stops refer to doubling or cutting in half the amount of light in a photograph. For example, going from one second to two seconds doubles the exposure time and doubles the amount of light.

  3. What is the EV Scale and how does it relate to shutter speeds?

    The EV Scale is a system used to measure light in photography. It assigns a number to indicate the amount of light available in a scene. Each increase of one on the scale represents a doubling of the light, and this concept is related to changing shutter speeds.

  4. Can shutter speeds be set in third stops?

    Yes, some cameras allow for setting shutter speeds in third stops, which provides more precise control over the amount of light in a photograph.

  5. What are the technical and aesthetic reasons for choosing different shutter speeds?

    Technically, a faster shutter speed can be chosen to let in less light, while a slower shutter speed can be chosen to let in more light. Aesthetically, a faster shutter speed can be used to freeze motion, while a slower shutter speed can be used to blur motion.

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

23:32
2

Photographic Characteristics

06:46
3

Camera Types

03:03
4

Viewing System

22:09
5

Lens System

24:38
6

Shutter System

12:56
7

Shutter Speed Basics

10:16
8

Shutter Speed Effects

31:57
9

Camera & Lens Stabilization

11:06
10

Quiz: Shutter Speeds

07:55
11

Camera Settings Overview

16:12
12

Drive Mode & Buffer

04:24
13

Camera Settings - Details

10:21
14

Sensor Size: Basics

18:26
15

Sensor Sizes: Compared

24:52
16

The Sensor - Pixels

22:49
17

Sensor Size - ISO

26:59
18

Focal Length

11:36
19

Angle of View

31:29
20

Practicing Angle of View

04:59
21

Quiz: Focal Length

08:15
22

Fisheye Lens

12:32
23

Tilt & Shift Lens

20:37
24

Subject Zone

13:16
25

Lens Speed

09:03
26

Aperture

08:25
27

Depth of Field (DOF)

21:46
28

Quiz: Apertures

08:22
29

Lens Quality

07:06
30

Light Meter Basics

09:04
31

Histogram

11:48
32

Quiz: Histogram

09:07
33

Dynamic Range

07:25
34

Exposure Modes

35:15
35

Sunny 16 Rule

04:31
36

Exposure Bracketing

08:08
37

Exposure Values

20:01
38

Quiz: Exposure

20:44
39

Focusing Basics

13:08
40

Auto Focus (AF)

24:39
41

Focus Points

17:18
42

Focus Tracking

19:26
43

Focusing Q&A

06:40
44

Manual Focus

07:14
45

Digital Focus Assistance

07:35
46

Shutter Speeds & Depth of Field (DOF)

05:18
47

Quiz: Depth of Field

15:54
48

DOF Preview & Focusing Screens

04:55
49

Lens Sharpness

11:08
50

Camera Movement

11:29
51

Advanced Techniques

15:15
52

Quiz: Hyperfocal Distance

07:14
53

Auto Focus Calibration

05:15
54

Focus Stacking

07:58
55

Quiz: Focus Problems

18:54
56

Camera Accessories

32:41
57

Lens Accessories

29:24
58

Lens Adaptors & Cleaning

13:14
59

Macro

13:02
60

Flash & Lighting

04:47
61

Tripods

14:13
62

Cases

06:07
63

Being a Photographer

11:29
64

Natural Light: Direct Sunlight

28:37
65

Natural Light: Indirect Sunlight

15:57
66

Natural Light: Mixed

04:20
67

Twilight: Sunrise & Sunset Light

22:21
68

Cloud & Color Pop: Sunrise & Sunset Light

06:40
69

Silhouette & Starburst: Sunrise & Sunset Light

07:28
70

Golden Hour: Sunrise & Sunset Light

07:52
71

Quiz: Lighting

05:42
72

Light Management

10:46
73

Flash Fundamentals

12:06
74

Speedlights

04:12
75

Built-In & Add-On Flash

10:47
76

Off-Camera Flash

25:48
77

Off-Camera Flash For Portraits

15:36
78

Advanced Flash Techniques

08:22
79

Editing Assessments & Goals

08:57
80

Editing Set-Up

06:59
81

Importing Images

03:59
82

Organizing Your Images

32:41
83

Culling Images

13:57
84

Categories of Development

30:59
85

Adjusting Exposure

08:03
86

Remove Distractions

04:02
87

Cropping Your Images

09:53
88

Composition Basics

26:36
89

Point of View

28:56
90

Angle of View

14:35
91

Subject Placement

23:22
92

Framing Your Shot

07:27
93

Foreground & Background & Scale

03:51
94

Rule of Odds

05:00
95

Bad Composition

07:31
96

Multi-Shot Techniques

19:08
97

Pixel Shift, Time Lapse, Selective Cloning & Noise Reduction

12:24
98

Human Vision vs The Camera

23:32
99

Visual Perception

10:43
100

Quiz: Visual Balance

14:05
101

Visual Drama

16:45
102

Elements of Design

09:24
103

Texture & Negative Space

03:57
104

Black & White & Color

10:33
105

The Photographic Process

09:08
106

Working the Shot

25:29
107

What Makes a Great Photograph?

07:01

Lesson Info

Shutter Speed Basics

Alright, we're gonna get to one of my favorite sections, and it's one of the most basic but also one of the most fundamental and important sections to photographers, and that is understanding shutter speeds. Conceptionally, it's pretty easy but there's a little, little nuances that you need to be very, very good at here. So this is an answer yourself quiz on this one, and the question is, which one of these two numbers is larger? Now that may seem like a very easy question. Nobodies pulled out their iPhone to, like, which number is larger? Google this, which number is larger, and we don't even have to think about these things, right? We're not gonna pull out any calculators to do this. We immediately know eight is bigger than two, but in our cameras when we talk about shutter speeds they're pretty much always listed in fractions, but the thing is, is the camera isn't telling you they're fractions, it's assumed that you know, and a lot of times people get confused, it's like oh wait it'...

s bigger, oh wait no it's reverse, cause we're doing reciprocals here, it's one over eight. An eight of a second is a smaller amount of time than a half second, and so just be aware that when you're looking at shutter speeds they're actually fractions of a second in most cases. So we've got our list of shutter speeds here, and if you were to look through the viewfinder of your camera, you at home take your camera out, look through the viewfinder, turn the camera on. I don't care what mode it's in, but usually the first number on the left, what does that mean, it's first number on, that means it's probably a really important number. So that's gonna be your shutter speed. Now in some cases, like Canon, Nikon, they'll say 2,000, or 500, and it's really 1/2,000th, 1/500th. Some of the new mirrorless camera, which have, shall we say better displays with more graphics, will actually tell you it's 1/500th, so you need to learn what your camera does. Remember that from the beginning of the class? You need know how to work your camera. Alright, so here's our list of shutter speeds. Now, I guess I should stop at this moment and explain that shutter speed is a terrible name. It's completely misleading, the speed of the shutter does not change in your camera, it always, at least I believe, I don't know. I believe it operates at exactly the same speed for every single shot. It's the difference between when does the first one open, and the second one close. That time difference, that exposure time difference, is the difference between these shutter speeds, and so it might help, conceptionally, to think exposure time, how much time is the sensor exposed to light, alright? I always like to start simple, so I think all of you know what one second is. That's about a second right? Alright, so we all know what a second is, when we go to two seconds, we've double the amount of time and we've doubled the amount of light. It's a linear scale, it's a one for one trade off here and so if we want it longer, we get twice as much light in that way. Now this is something that we're going to talk about, full stops. It means we've doubled or we've cut in half, and so when you hear someone talk about a full stop, that means they want it twice as bright or twice as dark, depends on what other words they say, whether they wanna go up or down in that direction. So to double, or to cut in half. The longest shutter speed on many cameras will be around 30 seconds. Not really much reason for it, other than when you go to one minute, well that's a whole different numbering system there, so 30 seconds is kind of a nice number, but some cameras are going well beyond that now. When we get up to a half second, it's half as much time, it's half as much light. Same scale, it works the whole way up and down. Now it gets kind of interesting here, because I know there's some very passionate people here, in politics and in math, right? Some of you are fraction people, and some of you are decimal people, I can just tell, let's not have any arguments in here, but sometimes your camera might say two. Some cameras say two, which means 1/2. Sometimes, some cameras say zero, quotation, five, and it says quotation not point because they're too cheap to put a point in there, they just use the quotations that were there and so that's 0.5 and they mean the same thing, they're both half a second, and so that is gonna be a full stop, less light than one second, because it's half as much time. A pretty normal shutter speed is one 1/60th of a second, but remember when you look in your camera it's gonna say 60, it's not gonna say 1/60 in most cases. The top shutter speed on most cameras is gonna be about an eight thousandth of a second, and so this is the range of shutter speeds that you're likely to deal with. Now something that we don't need to know, but I wanna share with you some of the history of why this doubling is like this in photography, and photographers used to judge everything on the EV Scale, Exposure Value Scale. They wanted to come up with a light metering system for photographers so that we could figure out, give me a number and I will figure out what shutter speeds and apertures I want, and so I remember I used to own a Hasselblad camera and they had an EV setting on there, and you could keep it at EV eight, and you could have shutter speeds and apertures of this, or shutter speeds and apertures of that, you could change it around, so it's one simple number that tells you how much light you are receiving. Right now, we don't use this, we usually say, well it's 500, 2.8 ISO 800. That's kinda a lot of words here, and so they used to measure light on an EV Scale, and EV zero is roughly ISO 100, f/1.4 at one second. Which was kinda the darkest situation that they imagined photographers ever getting involved in, and this was way back when they invented the scale which, I don't know, might have been in the 20s or 30s, I haven't done my research on this one yet, and so that's really dark. Now when you go to one from zero we're doubling the light, and so every time we go up one on the scale, we're doubling the light. There's a great difference between when it's dark and it's light and this is how we can do this. Indoor room lights, I've often found are around 6. I have a light meter that actually reads this out in EV. So you wanna go outside in a nice day in Seattle, that would be a cloudy day, that'd be 12. You wanna go outside on a bright sunny day, that's gonna be around 15, but the scale doesn't limit here, you can go as far as you want. If you wanna have a really bright light and get your light meter camera right next to it, it could be really bright. It could also go into the negatives, which there's like negative light? No, it's just that they've based zero on this setting, and they didn't foresee cameras being able to record in darker situations, and so some cameras will be able to autofocus at EV minus four, or EV minus five, which I don't know exactly what that is but it's really dark, it's not nothing, it's just really, really dark, it's not very much light there. So this is an EV scale, and if you get a handheld light meter, that's usually one of the options you can put it in EV readings or shutter speeds and apertures type readings, and that's how we kinda got to this whole changing by a full stop, and so we can change our shutter speeds by a full stop here. Now as you actually dial your shutter speed on your camera, changing these settings, you'll notice that you can get to third stops, and that's because photographers from time to time, like to be very picky and precise about what they're doing, and so we can set third stops. Well what about quarter stops, what about tenth stops? Why doesn't my camera have tenth stops on them? Well, not really necessary. If we were to look at two photos, and one photo just the smallest amount brighter that we would all say it's brighter, but barely anything at all, that is about a third of a stop right there. A stop brighter is gonna be, okay that's noticeably brighter than this one, it's like a baby step, and so if you need to set a tiny third of a stop, perfectly fine, I don't like listing them because it clutters up my screen with too many numbers, so I'm gonna stick with the whole numbers as we go through the rest of the class. There's a few cameras out there that have something called an X-SYNC, X is kinda your nickname for flash, your flash synchronization, and so some cameras you can dial in a special number for the flash synchronization. Let's say you like the flash to fire at 1/125, you could dial that in and have that set. What a number of cameras have is a bulb setting, and bulb setting refers back to the old days of photography where they had a cable release and they pushed it in on their big view camera and it left the shutter open, and so they might be Ansel Adams there, you know for 30 seconds holding the exposure open and then when he took his finger off, it closed the shutters. So it's any length you want, and it's gonna typically only be useful over 30 seconds, things you wanna leave open for a long period of time, all the modern cable releases have a lock on them so if you wanna leave it open for five minutes, you don't have to use your thumb , you can just kinda turn it on and lock it in, so that's for night time exposures. Now why are we gonna choose shutter speeds? This is the real thing, technical reasons, we wanna let in less light we're gonna choose a faster shutter speed, if we wanna let in more light we might wanna choose to let in that with a longer shutter speed. But for aesthetic reasons, we might wanna freeze motion with a faster shutter speed, and we might wanna blur motion, yes, sometimes we like these blurry in photography, we're gonna choose a slower shutter speed for it, and that means we have two different motivations, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do that, and sometimes these are in conflict. Artistically you wanna do something in your photograph, but technically it won't work, so you gotta know the ways to work around it. So there's a lot of things involved here, and just knowing what these do is the first step on it.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Fundamentals of Photography Class Outline
Learning Projects Workbook
Camera Keynote PDF
Sensor Keynote PDF
Lens Keynote PDF
Exposure Keynote PDF
Focus Keynote PDF
Gadgets Keynote PDF
Lighting Keynote PDF
Editing Keynote PDF
Composition Keynote PDF
Photographic Vision Keynote PDF

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Love love all John Greengo classes! Wish to have had him decades ago with this info, but no internet then!! John is the greatest photography teacher I have seen out there, and I watch a lot of Creative Live classes and folks on YouTube too. John is so detailed and there are a ton of ah ha moments for me and I know lots of others. I think I own 4 John Greengo classes so far and want to add this one and Travel Photography!! I just drop everything to watch John on Creative Live. I wish sometime soon he would teach a Lightroom class and his knowledge on photography post editing.!!! That would probably take a LOT OF TIME but I know John would explain it soooooo good, like he does all his Photography classes!! Thank you Creative Live for having such a wonderful instructor with John Greengo!! Make more classes John, for just love them and soak it up! There is soooo much to learn and sometimes just so overwhelming. Is there anyway you might do a Motivation class!!?? Like do this button for this day, and try this technique for a week, or post this subject for this week, etc. Motivation and inspiration, and playing around with what you teach, needed so much and would be so fun.!! Just saying??? Awaiting gadgets class now, while waiting for lunch break to be over. All the filters and gadgets, oh my. Thank you thank you for all you teach John, You are truly a wonderful wonderful instructor and I would highly recommend folks listening and buying your classes.

Eve
 

I don't think that adjectives like beautiful, fantastic or excellent can describe the course and classes with John Greengo well enough. I've just bought my first camera and I am a total amateur but I fell in love with photography while watching the classes with John. It is fun, clear, understandable, entertaining, informative and and and. He is not only a fabulous photographer but a great teacher as well. Easy to follow, clear explanations and fantastic visuals. The only disadvantage I can list here that he is sooooo good that keeps me from going out to shoot as I am just glued to the screen. :-) Don't miss it and well worth the money invested! Thank you John!

JUAN SOL
 

Dear John, thanks for this outstanding classes. You are not only a great photographer and instructor, but your classes are pleasant, they are not boring, with a good sense of humor, they go straight to the point and have a good time listening to you. Please, keep teaching what you like most, and I will continue to look for your classes. And thanks for using a plain English, that it's important for people who has another language as native language. Thanks again, Juan

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES