Do you "shutter" at ISO?

Thanks to everyone who has joined in the discussion so far-I've already learned more! Check out the comments on the previous post to see what others had to say about aperture and f/stops.

I think the hardest part of dealing with aperture, ISO and shutter speed is learning to set the f/stop to where you need it, so if you are feeling more comfortable with that, then this next part should be a breeze!
Once again, not claiming to be an expert, but I know enough to get me by, and would love your input and expertise on the subject!

ISO refers to your film speed and determines how fast an image will be captured by your digital sensor (or film if you like to kick it old school!).

Easy-the higher the ISO the quicker the image will be captured=less light required.
The lower the ISO the longer it takes for that image to be captured=more light required.

Here is a little guide to know what ISO to use in what situations that I have found helpful...

• Outdoors, Bright Light 100-200
• Perfect lighting situations, ie; outdoors, in the shade or overcast or indoors with good light stay close to about 400
• Indoors with low-light or when you are shooting sports or action 800-1600

Now every lens and camera is different, so you will have to play around a bit with these numbers, maybe write down what ISO's work best in each lighting situation for your particular lenses and keep it with your camera bag for easy reference until you have it all figured out.

Why not just shoot in high ISO all the time and not worry about lighting? Well the higher the ISO the more "noise" you will get in your picture. You want to keep it below 800 if possible to not get any "noise", unless you have a really fantastic lens and camera that will keep the "noise" to a minimum. But even then, as I understand it, you still only want to use a really high setting in action shots or in terrible lighting conditions.

Now shutter speed is the next thing to consider. Shutter speed is how quickly your shutter opens over your image sensor, (or film for you retro's).

• Faster the shutter=the more frozen that image is.
• Slower shutter=can cause blur or just be blurry.

The numbers when changing your shutter speed represent a fraction of a second. So if you have your shutter speed set at 1250, your shutter is opening at 1/1250th of a second. Fast huh?

Then there are also shutter speeds in seconds that have ("). So if your display on your shutter speed says 30", your shutter is going to stay open for 30 seconds! *Not a lot of instances I see using that speed, you? But I'm sure there are-enlighten us!

Here is another little reference guide for you, once again, play around with these and figure out what numbers work best for you and your particular lenses and camera and shot-these are totally general.

• Action shots, you want it at 1/1000 of a second or higher to freeze your subject.
• If you are holding your camera, steady yourself as much as possible and start your your shutter speed at 60 or faster. If you are not steady or you are taking pictures of squirmy kids you probably want to increase your shutter speed to accommodate and not get a blurry photo.
• For still shots, or when using your tripod or another stable surface you want a shutter speed around 50. In fact this is probably the only time you want to use a shutter speed this slow or slower, unless you really want to portray something blurry.

So those who haven't done this before, try shooting in Shutter priority for the next day or two-it is usually an S or Tv on your dial. See what you come up with and what you've learned then come back and share with us, so we can all learn.

Here are the shots I took using different shutter speeds...

This was shot at 40, or 1/40th of a second. Notice the water.This one I turned up the shutter speed to 60, do you see the difference in the water yet?This I shot at 1", or one second shutter speed. Shutter speed very slow and the picture, very blurred, but I kind of like how you can see the lines in the water...interesting.This was shot at 1250-now notice what is happening with the water.This one I shot at 4000 shutter speed. Very fast-check out the bubbles from the water and the splashes of water on the grass blades.FYI: The very top photo I shot at 1000 shutter speed and turned my ISO clear up to 1600 so you could see the "noise."

*So play around a bit with this, here is something I learned when researching a bit further on the subject...

• Using a very slow shutter speed-sometimes you may want to use the full second marks when you want to show the motion of an object within it's background. Such as traffic against a city scape. That way the cars would be blurred, and the background of the building would still be in focus, if you use a higher f/stop of course. You probably want to use a tripod or flat surface to set your camera on for these kind of shots though.

Next time I want to discuss how they all work together to determine exposure, depth of field (aperture) and motion (shutter speed) of the photo. Also we might talk a little bit about light as well, because it's really all about the light!