Why Your Shutter Speed Is Important

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t set my shutter speed—the camera does it for me, once I choose my f-stop—but I do keep an eye on the shutter speed for one simple reason: if my shutter speed gets too low, I’m going to wind up with some out-of-focus photos. Okay, so how low is “too low?” I can usually hand-hold my camera pretty steady as long as my shutter speed is 1/60 of a second or faster. To be quite honest, I’d prefer 1/125 of a second or faster. At that speed, I can pretty much be sure my shot will be sharp and in focus, and if I’m shooting in bright light, or in the middle of the day, my shutter speed usually won’t be an issue. I’ll look in the viewfinder at my shutter speed and it will be something like 1/2000 of a second, or even 1/4000 of a second, which means even if I don’t hold the camera perfectly still while I’m shooting, the shutter is only open for such a short time that it really won’t matter—the shots will still be sharp. However, as it gets later in the day and closer to sunset and the light gets darker, or if it starts to get really cloudy outside, my shutter speed will fall pretty dramatically. If I see it go below 1/60 of a second, I jump into action, and by that I mean I raise my ISO setting, which, in turn, raises my shutter speed for me because I’m shooting in aperture priority mode, which is another reason I love Av mode. So, I might go from 100 ISO to 400 ISO to get my shutter speed up over that 1/60 of a second mark to hopefully something like 1/125 of a second. Once I hit that, I know my shot will be sharp again. If I ignore it, there’s a pretty good chance that my shot will be either a little soft or just downright out of focus.