[Photography] How to Use Photo Studio Ultimate 2021’s Color and Tone Wheels for Amazing Results

The post How to Use Photo Studio Ultimate 2021’s Color and Tone Wheels for Amazing Results appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

Color editing is an essential part of nearly every great photo.

Unfortunately, adjusting the colors in most post-processing programs is difficult – or downright impossible.

One impressive exception to this, however, is ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021, which offers two powerful tools for color editing:

1. The Color Wheel
2. The Tone Wheels

And that’s what this article is all about. I’m going to show you how to use the Color Wheel and Tone Wheels to apply gorgeous color adjustments to your photos. You’ll discover how the Wheels work, what they can do, and how to get a professional look in your own images.

Let’s dive right in.

The Color and Tone Wheels: overview

The Color and Tone Wheels come as part of Photo Studio Ultimate 2021, a recently updated, all-in-one photo editor that you can grab on ACDSee’s website for $8.90/month (you also have the option to purchase a lifetime license for $149.99).

While Photo Studio Ultimate 2021 offers a lot of upgrades over its predecessor (including some major speed improvements that you’ll want to see for yourself), one of the biggest features for amateur and professional photographers is the set of color editing tools: the Color Wheel and the Tone Wheels.

Here’s a quick peek at the Color Wheel:

And here is the Tone Wheels panel:

Together, these two tools can revolutionize your photo editing workflow.

And here’s why:

With the Color and Tone Wheels, you can make both broad and targeted adjustments to the colors in your images. You can shift, brighten, and saturate colors selectively, you can push colors into the shadows, highlights, and midtones separately, and so much more – all with a few easy-to-use wheels and sliders.

As someone who’s a bit color-obsessed, I’ve used quite a few color adjustment tools in many different post-processing programs. But I can honestly say that Photo Studio Ultimate’s version is one of the best implementations I’ve ever seen (if not the best). Yes, the wheels are amazingly powerful, and they should offer any amateur or professional all the color adjustment power they need. But they’re also just so fun and intuitive to work with, which is what’s really sold me on this program.

Now let’s take a look at how you can actually use the Color and Tone Wheels for great results (and if you’re feeling intimidated, don’t be – I’ll give you simple, easy-to-follow instructions!).

How to use the Color Wheel to selectively adjust colors in your photos

You’ll find the Color Wheel in Photo Studio Ultimate 2021’s Develop mode, which you can select in the top-right corner of the screen:

Then open the Color Wheel panel on the left-hand side, and you’ll see a color wheel with a series of sliders below it:

Here’s what you need to know:

The color wheel itself lets you select the colors you’re targeting in the photo.

And the sliders below it allow you to adjust the targeted colors.

So once you have your Color Wheel panel open, here’s what I recommend you do:

Step 1: Select the colors you want to adjust

Selecting the colors you’d like to adjust pretty easy, and there are a couple of methods you can use.

First, you can simply hover your cursor over different parts of your photo, and watch as it turns into a dropper icon:

Then, by clicking once on the photo, you’ll select that color for adjustment.

So if you click on a pinkish-purple part of your photo, you’ll select all the pink-purple colors:

And if you click on a yellow part of your photo, you’ll select all the yellow colors:

Now, as soon as you click on a part of your photo, you’ll see the color wheel change. This is to show you the color range you’ve selected.

You can also use the display on the color wheel to either select colors (instead of the eyedropper), or to refine your color selection.

To select colors, just click on the relevant part of the wheel:

And to fine-tune the color selection, just narrow the range of colors on the color wheel – by dragging the edges of the selection inward or outward. That way, the adjustments you make via the sliders will affect a narrower or broader range of colors in your photo.

Here, I’ve narrowed the color selection:

And here I’ve broadened it:

Also, if you want to get really picky with your selection, you can drag your color range upward from the center of the wheel:

And this will ensure you only select the more saturated colors.

You can also drag downward from the rim of the wheel to select only the less-saturated colors:

By the way, if you want to see the areas you’ve selected displayed on your photo, just hit the Auto preview the selected range checkbox:

Your selected colors will be highlighted on the image, while everything else will be grayed out:

Cool, right?

Step 2: Adjust the colors using the sliders

Now comes the fun part:

Actually adjusting the colors.

While there are a number of sliders, I recommend you focus on three key options:

Hue.

Saturation.

And Brightness.

These are the main adjustments you’ll want to make (I use them on almost every photo I edit).

By shifting the Hue slider, you shift the hue of your selected color range. So if I select the pink colors in this flower photo and want to make them more purple, I can just push the Hue slider to the left:

I can also make them more red by pushing the Hue slider to the right:

Speaking more generally, the Hue slider is useful for situations where you want to separate colors to create contrast, or where you want to make colors more similar to add harmony.

(How do you know what creates contrast and what creates harmony? Look at the color wheel! Colors that are opposite one another are contrasting/complementary colors, whereas colors next to one another are analogous colors.)

While color contrast will generally create a more powerful, in-your-face photo, analogous colors can result in a more peaceful final image.

Anyway, once you’ve adjusted the hue, I recommend turning to the Saturation slider. This works the way it sounds: It lets you selectively boost or reduce the saturation of your selected color range.

So by selecting the yellows in the image below, then adjusting the Saturation slider, you can boost the yellow intensity:

Or you can dial it back:

In general, boosting the saturation of your main colors looks pretty good, as long as you don’t overdo it. That way, a few colors in your photo will stand out and keep the viewer interested.

However, it can also be helpful to reduce the saturation of colors that distract from the main subject. So if your photo includes a red “Exit” sign in the background, you might reduce the saturation of those reds to keep the viewer focused on the foreground.

Finally, I recommend experimenting with the Brightness slider. This allows you to adjust the brightness of your selected color range. So you can brighten up your selection to make it pop:

Or you can darken the selection down to make it less impactful:

Step 3: Create additional color wheels for further adjustments

While one color adjustment may sometimes be enough, you also have the option to create more.

Simply click the Plus icon:

Then follow the previous steps all over again!

Also, to toggle the effects of the color wheels on and off, you can just check and uncheck the box above each color wheel icon:

How to use the Tone Wheels to produce beautiful color grading

The Tone Wheels panel is located just below the Color Wheel panel in the Develop mode of Photo Studio Ultimate 2021:

Now, unlike the Color Wheel panel, you cannot select individual colors to adjust.

Instead, each of the three wheels corresponds to a different tonal range of your photo:

• The top wheel corresponds to the highlights (the brightest tones)
• The middle wheel corresponds to the midtones (the middle tones)
• The bottom wheel corresponds to the shadows (the darkest tones)

And by adjusting the tone wheels, you change the color in the corresponding area of the image.

So by setting the Highlights wheel to yellow, your photo’s highlights will be tinted yellow:

And by setting the Shadows wheel to green, your photo’s shadows will be tinted green:

This is a fantastic way to add different looks to your images. For instance, you can create blue shadows and yellow highlights, which is a popular look on Instagram. Or you can make the highlights orange and the shadows teal, for a cinematic, movie-type result.

Now, the tone wheels themselves only allow you to select the hue and saturation of the color you’d like to add.

But by shifting the Brightness slider – found to the right of each wheel – you can also make the highlights, midtones, and shadows brighter or darker.

So how do you get great results using the Color Wheel panel? How should you approach this color adjustment tool?

Here’s what I recommend:

Step 1: Adjust the shadows

I like to start by adjusting the shadows in my images.

Now, you can choose your shadow color a few different ways:

One method is to select the Shadows eyedropper:

Then you can click on a part of your photo and the Shadows wheel will select its hue:

Alternatively, you can click around the wheel to select different colors:

And you can further fine-tune the saturation with the left-hand slider:

Plus you can change the brightness of the shadows with the right-hand slider:

Personally, my favorite way to select colors is to use the wheel, but start by pushing the Saturation slider all the way up:

That way, you can clearly see the effects of your color grade – and once you’ve chosen the right color, you can dial it back.

Also, while it’s always a good idea to experiment, the best shadow colors are generally cool – blues, greens, and purples.

I’d also recommend paying careful attention to the colors already present in your shadows – by matching the shadow color with already-existing colors, you can unify the darker parts of your photo and make it even stronger.

For this flower photo, I like blue-green shadows:

Step 2: Adjust the highlights

Selecting a color for the Highlights wheel is just like selecting a color for the Shadows wheel.

You can use the eyedropper tool:

Or you can click on the wheel directly.

Of course, you can also fine-tune with the Saturation slider and the Brightness slider:

Generally, you’ll want a warmer color for the highlights: an orange, yellow, or red.

It’s also a good idea to pay attention to your existing highlight colors. For instance, if your photo has a lot of warm sunlight, such as in the shot of the Black-eyed Susan flowers, you might want to accentuate the yellows with some nice golden highlights:

I’d also recommend looking at your shadow colors even when adjusting the Highlights wheel. For a nice result, you might choose a color that contrasts with the shadows to create a complementary color pair (as I discussed in the Color Wheel section, above).

Step 3: Adjust the midtones

Adjusting the midtones is a bit less common than adjusting the highlights and the shadows.

For one, if you adjust the midtones, your photo will often take on a more obvious tinted look, because we humans expect midtones to be more neutral compared to colder shadows and warmer highlights.

Plus, the midtones can correspond to skin tones, which you (generally) want to keep as natural as possible.

So I recommend you be careful when experimenting with the Midtones color wheel. If you do decide you want to make changes, I’d recommend keeping things closely aligned with the highlights, because too many colors in your scene will start to look messy.

Make sense?

As you’d expect, adjusting the midtones is just like adjusting the highlights and shadows. You have the Midtone color wheel that you can click on:

Plus your eyedropper:

Which you can use to give your midtones a slight color grade!

ACDSee’s Color and Tone Wheels: the next steps

Now that you’ve finished this article, you know how to make pro-level color adjustments.

And with Photo Studio Ultimate 2021’s Color Wheel and Tone Wheels tools, you have everything you need to take your color editing to the next level.

So make sure you grab ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2021. It’s currently available for just $8.90 per month, or you can get a lifetime license for $149.99. And if you’re just interested in trying out the software, you can get a free trial right here.

ACDSee is a paid partner of dPS.

The post How to Use Photo Studio Ultimate 2021’s Color and Tone Wheels for Amazing Results appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Jaymes Dempsey.

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[Photography] Tips For Achieving Blurry Backgrounds When You Don’t Have a Fast Lens

The post Tips For Achieving Blurry Backgrounds When You Don’t Have a Fast Lens appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by John McIntire.

Using a shallow depth of field to get blurry backgrounds in your photos is a powerful and popular tool for photographers. Blurring your background in this way makes it easy to obscure details in your scene that don’t add anything to your photographs. This helps to ensure that the focus of your images is your subject, and only your subject.

Using fast lenses with maximum apertures such as f/1.8 or f/2.8 is the easiest way to achieve this blurry background effect.

Using a fast aperture (f/1.8 here) is a surefire way to ensure blurry backgrounds in your images, but what do you do if you don’t have access to a fast lens?
Canon 5D Mark III | Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 | 85mm | 1/1600s | f/1.8 | ISO 100

However, what do you do if you don’t have a fast lens? And what do you do in situations where you are unable to use your lens wide open?

Here, you can see the difference the aperture has on the background. On the left, the aperture is f/8, while on the right, it is f/1.8.

Fortunately, manipulating the aperture settings in-camera is only one way to control how depth of field appears in your images.

This article will show you two ways to help you achieve more background blur when you don’t have access to a fast lens and when you can’t shoot wide open.

1. Get closer to your subject

An easy way to obtain a shallower depth of field for blurry backgrounds is to simply get closer to your subject.

Simply moving your position so that you are closer to the subject is a great way to manipulate depth of field. The closer you get, the shallower the depth of field gets.

Depth of field is determined by multiple factors. Aperture is one, but another important factor is how close the camera is to your subject. 

By moving your camera closer to your subject, you will increase the amount of background blur that appears behind your subject. 

(Conversely, if you want more depth of field in your image, move farther away from your subject.) 

Putting it into practice

With techniques like this, it can be a good idea to do a few exercises so you can see exactly what is going on.

To see this technique in action, find yourself a subject and position them in front of a background. Choose a background that’s a little bit busy (like foliage) so you can see the full effect. 

In the leftmost image, I was 12 feet away from the subject. You can see almost all of the details in the background. I slowly moved closer, 2 feet at a time; you should be able to see as the background gets blurrier. The last image was from 4 feet away. (Images are cropped for comparison.)

If you’ve chosen a portrait subject, start from between eight and ten feet away. If you’ve chosen something smaller, decrease that distance as much as you need to have a somewhat reasonable composition.

No matter what lens you have, you should be able to choose an aperture of f/5.6. Dial that in and adjust the other settings until you have a decent exposure. Take a shot. 

Step forward a foot and take another. Then move a foot closer again and take a third shot. Do this until you have reached your minimum focusing distance or you are too close to your subject to frame a photo. 

Then you can review the images in order. Watch for how the depth of field becomes shallower the closer you are to your subject. 

If you use multiple lenses, I encourage you to do this with all of them. 

The reverse

Of course, if what you want is more depth of field (i.e., less blurry backgrounds) in your frame, you can always move further away from your subject. 

In more depth

If you are technically minded and want to learn more about why and how this works, note that depth of field is governed by the inverse square law, just like many other aspects of photography. These other aspects include light intensity (which governs your exposure) and light fall-off (which governs the shape of the light). 

With an in-depth knowledge of the inverse square law and how it works, you would actually be able to calculate exactly where you need to be with a certain focal length and aperture to get an exact result. You will probably never find yourself in a situation where you would need to do this, but it is still possible! 

2. Bring your subject farther from the background

The other main way to achieve a shallower depth of field is to put more distance between your subject and the background.

Another easy way to manipulate depth of field for blurry backgrounds is to move your subject away from the background. Both images above were shot at f/8, but the lefthand image was taken 2 feet away from the background. The righthand image was taken 12 feet from the background.

This works the same way as the previous technique, but in this case, you will be moving your subject rather than the camera. If your subject is close to the background, more background detail will be present. To get more blur, simply move your subject forward. 

Practice

To see this concept in use, position your subject almost touching a background of your choice; this can be a studio background, some trees, or a wall. 

To practice this, have your subject move away from the background in set increments. Make sure you move the same distance back, as well. Here (from top-left to bottom-right), the subject started 2 feet away from the background and ended 12 feet away from the background.

Start at an aperture of f/5.6 and get a decent exposure with your other settings. Take a shot. Now move your subject a foot away from the background. Note that it’s important that you move the same distance backward. If you don’t, then you will have two factors affecting the depth of field in the frame, and it will be impossible to accurately see what is blurring the background. 

Take another shot. Move yourself and your subject another foot back and shoot again. Repeat as many times as you want. In practice, how far away you move your subject is dependent on how much blur you want to achieve.

Do you want to retain some detail so that your viewers can recognize the background? Or would you rather obliterate any background details altogether, ensuring that your subject is the only thing for your viewers to focus on?

Real-world use

Now that you have put all of this into practice and you have your sequences of images, you should have a good idea of how the depth of field changes with your distance from the subject and the subject’s distance from the background. 

At the end of the day, you do not need a fast lens to achieve blurry backgrounds in your portraits. You are still able to achieve a shallow depth of field with smaller apertures.
Canon 5D Mark III | Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L | 1/200s | f/8 | ISO 800

Not only will you be able to use this knowledge to help you get a shallower depth of field when you can’t shoot wide open, but it will also help you design any desired photos long before you pick up the camera.

For example, you might want an image where your subject is in focus from front to back, but you want the background to be as obscured as possible. Having gone through these exercises, you should be able to approximate what aperture you need to use, how close to the subject you need to be, and how far away the background needs to be. And you should be able to do it in a fairly short amount of time, too!

Achieving blurry backgrounds: final words

Manipulating depth of field to get blurry backgrounds may be a basic technique, but understanding fundamentals like these helps give you a well-rounded set of camera skills that will serve you well in your photography. 

The post Tips For Achieving Blurry Backgrounds When You Don’t Have a Fast Lens appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by John McIntire.

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[Photography] How to Create a Watermark with the Pen Tool in Photoshop

The post How to Create a Watermark with the Pen Tool in Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

Did you know that you can create a watermark with the Pen tool? Watermarking images is one of those issues that sparks strong feelings; some people love it and others hate it.

I think the success of a watermark is a matter of knowing when to use it and how to make it.

This article will show you how to create a watermark – using only the Pen tool in Photoshop!

What is a watermark?

A watermark is a digital “signature” that you add to your photographs. It doesn’t have to be a literal signature, though – you can use a logo, your name, or just the copyright symbol.

The purpose of the watermark is either to protect your work or to advertise yourself. But you’ll want to make sure that your watermark isn’t too distracting. Otherwise, you are defeating the point of showing your work online.

What is the Photoshop Pen tool?

The Pen tool is one of the most useful features in Photoshop, yet it’s very underused because it’s mostly associated with making selections.

Since there are many selection tools that have easier learning curves, a lot of people don’t really get to know the Pen tool’s full potential.

While the Pen tool is in fact a very precise tool for making selections, the biggest advantage of the Pen tool is that you can work with paths. From a path, you can make vector masks, strokes, shapes, and even fonts.

Why should you create a watermark with the Pen tool?

There are different ways of creating a watermark in Photoshop. I believe that using Pen tool is the most efficient.

For one, a watermark created with the Pen tool will be vector art. You can enlarge it or shrink it many times and never lose quality.

That way, you can use it for all your needs. Also, paths remain editable for you to come back to and modify any time you want.

Shapes in Photoshop are also vector-based. But with the Pen tool, you have full creative freedom. You can draw anything you want and convert it into a shape or use it to trace a brushstroke.

As you can see, you can combine a series of elements and techniques that will allow you to create the perfect watermark. In the following guide, I’ll be showing you how to do it.

Let’s get started!

How to create a watermark with the Pen tool

To quickly create a watermark, just follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Open a new document

Open Adobe Photoshop and create a new document. The size and resolution are not important because you’ll be working with vectors, so you can always scale it later.

The only thing that you need to remember is to set the Background Contents option as Transparent.

Step 2: Make a sketch

This step is optional, but I find it very helpful. What I like to do is add a new layer (though it’s important that it’s transparent).

With the Brush tool set to a bright color, I start by drawing how I want my watermark to look at the end.

Unless you are a very gifted designer, the drawing won’t look very good. This is what always happens to me, and it’s one of the reasons why using the Pen tool is better than using the Brush tool to ultimately create your watermark.

In any case, doing a rough sketch will give you an idea of the size and proportion of the elements you want to include.

Step 3: Trace a path

I’m going to add a black layer to make the work more visible for you. You can do this, too, if it helps you, but remember to delete it at the end.

Grab the Pen tool from the toolbox on the left or activate it with its keyboard shortcut (the “P” key).

At the top of the screen, you’ll see how the options change. Make sure your Pen tool is set to Path. Then just click to add the first anchor point.

You can move the anchor points to modify the path by holding the Ctrl/Cmd key. You can also adjust the handles by holding the Alt/Option key.

Continue creating anchor points, following the shape that you’d like to create. To curve the path, just drag the anchor point until the handles appear. You can use the handles to adjust the curvature.

If this is your first time using the Pen tool, you can check out this guide. Don’t worry if it doesn’t come out perfect on the first try.

Paths are always editable, so you can correct any mistakes. You can make the entire design in a single path, or make separate ones.

Step 4: Stroke the path

Open the Brush tool and choose the settings that you want for the design that you’re creating. This includes the color, the size, the hardness, and the shape of the brush.

Then open the Paths panel. If it’s not active, you can access it from the menu: Windows > Paths.

Now, right-click on your working path and choose Stroke Path from the menu. Make sure you select Brush in the Tool dropdown menu, then hit OK. This will apply the settings that you have set on your Brush tool.

If you’re not happy with the result, just hit Undo and change the settings on your brush until you’re satisfied.

Disable or lower the opacity of the sketch layer for better visibility.

Step 5: Make shapes

Sometimes, instead of strokes, you need to make shapes. For that, grab the Pen tool and change it from Path to Shape in the Options bar.

Here, you can change the fill or the stroke as you need. It is also possible to create complex designs with a single path by combining or intersecting multiple shapes. This can also be set up in the Options bar.

Step 6: Convert strokes to shapes

If you go to the Layers panel, you’ll notice that the paths you converted to strokes are now rasterized. This means they are using pixels instead of vectors.

To change that, go back to the Paths panel and click on the corresponding path. Then activate the Pen tool and choose Shape:

Step 7: Merge shapes and save

Once you’re done, delete all the rasterized layers, including the one with the sketch and the black background.

If you want, you can save a .PSD copy with all the layers before moving on.

Then select all the shapes, right-click, and choose Merge Shapes.

Then save your document as a .PNG, which will preserve transparency. This is important because other formats will fill the background with white.

Step 8: Watermark your photos

Open any image you want to watermark. Then go to File>Place Embedded. If you’re using Photoshop CS6, it will be called Place.

This will open a browser window. Choose your watermark file and click OK. This will open your watermark in Photoshop.

Resize it and position it to your liking. You can also reduce the opacity if you think the watermark is too distracting.

And that’s it! Remember that you can save this step as a Photoshop action to automate the watermarking process.

Other ways to create a watermark in Photoshop

I hope you enjoyed using the Pen tool to create watermarks. However, this is not the only way to do it. If you want to try different methods, check out any of these amazing tutorials:

• How to Create Your Own Watermark using a Custom Shape in Photoshop
• How to Automate Your Watermarking
• How to Watermark Your Images Using Lightroom and Photoshop CC
• How to Create Custom Brushes in Photoshop and use them for watermarking

The post How to Create a Watermark with the Pen Tool in Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

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[Photography] Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography

The post Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darren Rowse.

Previously, I introduced the concept of the exposure triangle as a way of thinking about getting off of Auto Mode and exploring the idea of manually adjusting the exposure of your shots.

The three main settings that you can adjust are ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. As we’ve covered aperture and ISO in other articles, today I want to turn your attention to shutter speed.

What is shutter speed?

As I’ve written elsewhere, defined most basically, shutter speed is “the amount of time that the shutter is open.”

In film photography, shutter speed is the length of time that the film is exposed to the scene you’re photographing. Similarly, in digital photography, shutter speed is the length of time that your image sensor “sees” the scene you’re attempting to capture.

Let me attempt to break down the topic of “shutter speed” into some bite-sized pieces that should help digital camera owners trying to get their head around shutter speed:

• Shutter speed is measured in seconds – or, in most cases, fractions of seconds. The bigger the denominator, the faster the speed (i.e., 1/1000s is much faster than 1/30s).
• In most cases, you’ll probably need shutter speeds of 1/60th of a second or faster. This is because anything slower than this is very difficult to use without getting camera shake. Camera shake is when your camera is moving while the shutter is open; it causes blur in your photos.
• If you’re using a slow shutter speed (anything slower than 1/60s), you will need to either use a tripod or some type of image stabilization technology (more and more cameras are coming with this built-in).
• Shutter speeds available on your camera will often double (approximately) with each setting. As a result, you’ll generally have the option to use the following shutter speeds: 1/500s, 1/250s, 1/125s, 1/60s, 1/30s, 1/15s, 1/8s, etc. This doubling is handy to keep in mind, as aperture settings also double the amount of light that is let in. As a result, increasing the shutter speed by one stop and decreasing the aperture by one stop should give you similar exposure levels.
• Some cameras also give you the option for very slow shutter speeds that are not fractions of seconds but are measured in seconds (for example, 1 second, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, etc.). These are used in very low light situations when you’re after special effects and/or when you’re trying to capture a lot of movement in a shot. Some cameras also give you the option to shoot in “B” (or “Bulb”) mode. Bulb mode lets you keep the shutter open for as long as you hold the shutter button down.
• When considering what shutter speed to use in an image, you should always ask yourself whether anything in your scene is moving and how you’d like to capture that movement. If there is movement in your scene, you have the choice of either freezing the movement (so it looks still) or letting the moving object intentionally blur (giving it a sense of movement).
• To freeze movement in an image (like in the shots of the bird above and the surfer below), you’ll want to choose a faster shutter speed. To let the movement blur, you’ll want to choose a slower shutter speed. The actual speeds you should choose will vary depending upon the speed of the subject in your shot and how much you want it to be blurred.

In the bird image above, the shutter speed was 1/1000th of a second, meaning that despite the bird’s fast-flapping wings, they appear to be frozen in a split second of time. The surfing shot below had a fast shutter speed (around 1/4000th of a second), which captured even the splashing drops of water sharply.

• Motion is not always bad. I spoke to one digital camera owner last week who told me that he always used fast shutter speeds and couldn’t understand why anyone would want motion in their images. But there are times when motion is good. For example, when you’re taking a photo of a waterfall or a seascape and want to show how fast the water is flowing, or when you’re taking a shot of a racing car and want to give it a feeling of speed, or when you’re taking a shot of a starscape and want to show how the stars move over a longer period of time. In all of these instances, choosing a longer shutter speed will be the way to go. However, in all of these cases, you will need to use a tripod or you’ll run the risk of ruining the shots by adding camera movement (which results in a different type of blur than motion blur).

For example, in the following waterfall photo, the shutter speed was around 1s, so we see the movement in the water:

In the subway shot below, the shutter speed was around 2s, so the movement of the train is beautifully blurred:

• Focal length and shutter speed – Another thing to consider when choosing your shutter speed is the focal length of the lens you’re using. Longer focal lengths will accentuate the amount of camera shake you have, and so you’ll need to choose a faster shutter speed (unless you have image stabilization in your lens or camera). The rule of thumb here (in situations without image stabilization) is to choose a shutter speed with a denominator that is larger than the focal length of the lens. For example, if you have a lens that is 50mm, a shutter speed of 1/60s is probably okay. But if you have a 200mm lens, you’ll probably want to shoot at around 1/250s or higher.

Shutter speed – bringing it together

Remember that thinking about shutter speed in isolation from the other two elements of the exposure triangle (aperture and ISO) is not really a good idea. As you change your shutter speed, you’ll need to change one or both of the other elements to compensate for it.

For example, if you increase your shutter speed by one stop (for example, from 1/125s to 1/250s), you’re effectively letting half as much light into your camera. To compensate for this, you’ll probably need to increase your aperture by one stop (for example, from f/16 to f/11). The other alternative would be to choose a higher ISO (you might want to move from ISO 100 to ISO 200, for example).

I hope you’ve found this introduction to shutter speed useful. I would highly recommend you also put a little time aside today to learn about the other two important elements of the exposure triangle – aperture and ISO.

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The post Introduction to Shutter Speed in Digital Photography appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Darren Rowse.

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