The core adjustment parameters of the camera are mainly three, shutter, aperture and ISO. The display format of the shutter is generally 20s, 1s, 1/100s, 1/2000s, etc. For photography, the shutter is not a simple number. By changing the shutter, many completely different styles of photo effects can be achieved.
1. The first task of the shutter is to control the exposure time
In current cameras, the shutter not only has a mechanical form (mostly used in SLR cameras), but also an electronic form (usually used in mirrorless cameras).
The most important job of the shutter is to control the exposure time. Let us take the traditional mechanical shutter as an example, which is more vivid. There is a shutter curtain in a mechanical shutter, just like a curtain in a home. When the curtain is opened, the light enters, and then the photosensitive element can record the light, and then the curtain is closed, and the recording ends. The time in this process is the shutter time.
The longer the shutter time, such as 1/3s, 1s, 5s, 30s, etc., the more light that can be recorded in the picture, and the brighter the picture. The shorter the shutter time, such as 1/200s, 1/2000s, 1/4000s, 1/8000s, etc., the less light can be recorded in the picture and the darker the picture. So the most important job of the shutter is to control the exposure time.
Of course, the shutter is not the only parameter that can control the brightness of the screen. Aperture, ISO, and exposure compensation can also affect the brightness of the screen, so the adjustment of these parameters needs to complement each other.
2. What is the fastest and slowest shutter of a general camera?
The shutter is preset for the general mainstream cameras, and the allocated interval is the slowest speed of 30 seconds. The fastest speed varies with different models. Normal products and semi-professional cameras can generally reach 1/4000 seconds, and professional models can reach 1/8000 seconds.
These presets are for most SLR and mirrorless cameras with mechanical and electronic shutters. There are also a small number of electronic shutter cameras that can be adjusted to a faster shutter speed, but there is not much difference in the effect.
So is the shutter interval only 30s-1/8000s? The fastest speed has just been introduced, the slowest shutter speed is naturally not the case, it can also become very slow.
The slowest shutter speed that our normal automatic gear, P gear, AV gear, TV gear and M gear can achieve is 30s. If you use Bulb, the shutter speed can be manually controlled by yourself. The principle of Bulb is to press the shutter. Start the exposure, release the shutter to stop the exposure, the duration of the period is arbitrary.
3. What safety shutter? What should the value be?
The concept of the safe shutter is to ensure that you will not take a false picture when you are holding it. If the shutter speed is higher than the safe shutter value, the success rate of hand-held shooting will be great. Of course, it varies from person to person. Some users still cannot guarantee the success of hand-held shooting even if they use a value above the safe shutter.
Theoretically, the speed of the safety shutter is inversely related to the focal length of the lens. For example, if the focal length of the lens is 200mm, then its safe shutter speed is 1/200 second; the focal length of the lens is 14mm, and the safety shutter speed is 1/14 second (actually Most users at this speed can no longer hold stable shooting).
In theory, the safe shutter speed of a wide-angle lens is lower than that of a telephoto lens. In actual use, in order to be more secure, we generally use the shutter speed twice the safety shutter to shoot. The current anti-shake lens can basically reduce the safe shutter speed by three to four times, which is very practical.
In addition, while ensuring the safe shutter value, you also need to use the correct hand-held camera posture. If the posture is strange, it may not guarantee the success of the shooting.
4. High-speed shutter: mostly used for freezing moments
Generally speaking, high-speed shutters are mainly used for capturing or shooting objects with very strong light. For example, we photograph the moments of sports athletes, the moments of birds flying, the moments of passing cars, the moments of object explosions, or solar eclipses. These scenes often require relatively high shutter speeds.
The high-speed shutter speed does not have to be 1/4000s or 1/8000s. The values of 1/200s and 1/400s are already high-speed shutters.
In our daily life, high-speed shutters can also be used for many moments. For example, shooting the moments of moving vehicles or walking people, shooting the moments of fountains, shooting sunsets, and so on.
Usually when using high-speed shutter to capture, the scene needs to be light enough, with a larger aperture and a relatively suitable ISO value.
Of course, there is an advanced application of high-speed shutter, which is bullet time.
The shooting of bullet time is to use a lot of cameras to shoot, each camera uses a high-speed shutter to record the moment, and then these photos are synthesized into a GIF or video through the post software, which becomes the special effect of bullet time. Of course, it is difficult for ordinary people to achieve bullet time, because the solutions and shooting equipment are relatively expensive, so you can find out here.
5. Slow shutter speed: capture movement trajectory
After talking about high-speed shutter, let’s talk about low-speed shutter. A slow shutter speed means using a longer shutter speed, which can also become a long time exposure. The slow shutter speed can capture the movement trajectory of the object due to the long exposure time of the shutter. What is the trajectory of objects, such as fireworks, traffic, water, etc., all of which require low-speed shutter to shoot.
Generally speaking, such as 1/5s and 1s are already slow shutter speeds, and 20s, 30s or even longer shutter speeds are also called slow shutter speeds. Using bulb shooting can even be exposed for more than 1 hour.
When using a slow shutter speed, handheld shooting is already impossible, so use it with a tripod to ensure the success rate of shooting. Shooting scenes with slow shutter speeds are usually at night when the light is dim. If you shoot during the day, you need to use an ND filter.
6. Special application for long exposure: shooting starry sky and galaxy
The shooting method of the starry sky and the Milky Way is the same, the principle of shooting is large aperture, proper exposure time and high ISO. In theory, the best way to shoot the stars and the Milky Way is to use a wide-angle lens with a super-large aperture, so that the picture will be better and the effect will be more obvious.
In terms of parameters, since everyone has different shooting equipment, image quality and noise control capabilities, we can only roughly introduce some parameter settings. Aperture, use the largest aperture equipped with the lens.
The shutter is recommended to be 15s-20s. If it is too short, the exposure time is not enough and the picture is too dim; if it is too long, it will pull the star trails, which will not look good. If you use a bulb to expose a single sheet for a few minutes, you can see obvious star trails.
For the ISO part, it is recommended to use the high ISO that the camera can withstand as much as possible, such as ISO 1250, ISO 1600, etc. The top full-frame can be considered ISO 3200 or 6400.
When shooting, be sure to use a tripod, because placing it on a rock is not reliable and unstable. It is recommended that you match the shutter release cable, so that it will not cause camera shake when pressing the shutter.
7. Special application for long exposure: light painting photography
Another special application is light painting. Light painting shooting is also one of the long-exposure shooting types. It needs to be used with a tripod, and the requirements for the camera and lens are very low.
Light painting is to use light-emitting objects (the best to measure the flashlight, the camera flash light is relatively weak) during the long exposure shooting period to draw or write in the space in the screen, so that the trajectory of the light is recorded, forming a light Paint photos.
Light painting shooting mainly depends on the exposure time, the length of time depends on what you want to write in the photo. For a few simple letters, 5-10s is enough; for writing Chinese characters, 15-20s exposure time is recommended, or 30s exposure for direct shooting; if you are drawing a pattern, it is recommended to use the camera’s B gate, so that the exposure time can be Unlimited.
The light painting seems to be tall, but the actual operation is very simple. The main reason is that you have to plan the path of the light painting, the text must be able to diverge distances, and the paintings must be able to connect together.
Seeing this, do you basically have a more detailed understanding of the shutter part of the camera? On the camera screen, the shutter is just a series of simple numbers, but in actual use, the significance of the shutter is far greater than the series of numbers. Through the application of different shutters, you can take many different kinds of photos. Of course, there are many shooting methods that we have not introduced, which also depend on different shutter speeds, such as explosive blur.
