Shutter-Priority Effects

In my previous post, I showed examples of how by changing aperture settings the photographer can alter the depth of field.  In this post, I'll show the effect of setting your camera to Shutter Priority (Tv on Canon cameras) and experimenting with fast and slow shutter speeds.

When you set your camera to Shutter Priority (instead of fully manual), your camera will automatically set aperture and iso.  So, as in the previous post, the depth of field will change.  But by setting the shutter speed very fast or very slow, you can stop or blur movement, respectively.

With a very fast shutter speed in the image in the left below, individual drops of water are visible.  With the very slow shutter speed on the right, the water falling is blurred, as are the resulting ripples. (Both images were shot while using a tripod and a 50mm lens.)

left: 1/2000 second exposure, f1.8, ISO 400                  right: 1 second exposure, f23, ISO 100 

Note also the difference in the shadow on the rock in the upper-right of each image and the difference in detail in the water upstream.

Sports and live-arts photographers may also wish to use fast shutter speeds to capture images without blurring.  Note, however, that the price of high shutter speeds is either small f-stop values or high ISO values.  Very small f-stop values (large aperture) generally mean expensive lenses.  Very high ISO values generally mean graininess in images.  Such are the tradeoffs.