Nikon Coolpix P6000 with SB-400 High Shutter Speed by littcool

Today our topic of conversation is shutter speed, continuing our media science series about photography.

Shutter speed refers to how long the shutter of a camera is open for. Shutter speed is closely tied to aperture. When talking about fast lenses, the shutter speed is what really makes a lens “fast”. As more light comes in from a wide aperture, the shutter speed can be shorter and shorter to accommodate capturing an extremely quick moment like a baseball being thrown or a hummingbird’s wings.

Shutter speed and aperture go hand in hand. When camera standards were decided upon, changing the shutter and aperture inversely would maintain the same amount of light in an image. This has changed a bit with digital cameras, but originally shutter speed options were in multiples (like 1/30, 1/60, etc.), so multiple properly exposed images could be created using different settings.

Here is an Flickr set as an example of photos of the same subject (fountains) at different shutter speeds: Shutter Speed Tests.