- What is shutter speed?
In this video, we're gonna dig
into how shutter speed affects your image
and what you need to think about
when you're dialing in your camera settings
so that you can get the best look out of your camera.
All right, guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
So this is part of the series that I'm doing
that's all about how to master your camera for filmmaking.
So shutter speed is the first part of the exposure triangle
that I wanna dig into.
Shutter speed is gonna control how bright
or how dark your image is,
and it's also gonna control how much motion blur
you have in your footage.
Now, before we get into how it works,
you just need to first understand what video is
so that you understand how motion blur affects video.
So when you think of video,
it's actually just a series of photographs.
So if you're shooting at 24 frames per second,
that's literally 24 frames every second, 24 images.
So I'm shooting at 30 frames a second,
that's where I like to shoot.
Now you can have your own preference, whether it's 24 or 30,
but when you're shooting at a frame rate,
it's how many images you're getting per second.
So video is just made up of a bunch of images
that when strung together,
looks like it's seamless and it's moving.
And in your camera, you have a shutter.
Now, old cameras had a mechanical shutter.
It was a physical,
like curtains that opened and closed
that allows the light to hit the film or the sensor,
on modern cameras it's a sensor.
And you can change how much time your sensor
is exposed to light.
So the slower your shutter is,
the more light that's gonna be let into the sensor,
and the faster your shutter is, the less light.
So slower shutter equals a brighter images
and your shutter speed is gonna be displayed
in a fraction of a second.
Now we'll talk about shutter angle in a little bit,
but I just wanna start with shutter speed.
So it will be like 1/50 of a second,
or 1/25 of a second, or 1/500 of a second.
And that fraction is just letting you know
how much time your sensor is exposed to the light
on each one of your frames.
So if you're shooting at 24 frames per second,
each one of those frames is gonna be exposed
to light for 1/500 of a second
if your shutter speed is set to 1/500.
So if you're in a situation where it's darker out
and you really need to brighten your image,
you might think,
"Well, just let my sensor be exposed to light longer.
So I'll go to a 1/25, 1/20, 1/10."
The issue is that shutter speed is not only controlling
how bright or dark your image is,
but it's also controlling your motion blur.
So each frame in your video has a little bit of motion blur,
which is going to affect how they play next to each other.
So in filmmaking, the rule of thumb is
to open up your shutter to double that of your frame rate.
This gives you just enough motion blur,
where it feels natural to the viewer.
Now, if you open up your shutter too wide,
say 1/10 of a second,
you're gonna introduce a ton of motion blur into your shot,
and it just gives it this really weird quality.
Now, if you go on the other end of the spectrum,
you open it up to 1/500 of a second,
you're gonna take out basically all of the motion blur
and your footage is gonna become very jittery.
And again, it doesn't look very natural to a viewer.
The amount of motion blur that you get
when you open up your shutter
to double that or your frame rate has become the standard,
and when people are watching video, it just feels natural.
If you're shooting at 24 frames per second,
a lot of cameras will only be able
to open up to 1/50 of a second,
but more and more do allow you to do 1/48.
If you're shooting at 30 frames a second,
which I'm doing right now, you would do 1/60 of a second.
So now it's into shutter angles.
So the standard for cinema is angle versus shutter speed.
And this is because back in the old days with film stuff,
there used to be a rotating disc
that would allow light to hit the film
because the film was going through the camera continuously.
And so that disc would rotate, and how open that disc is
would give the same effect as the shutter speed.
So for shutter angle, to get the same effect
as double that of your frame rate, you'd use 180 degrees.
That's gonna give you the exact same look
as shooting at double that of your frame rate
when you're using shutter speed.
So for me, if my camera has shutter angle, I always use it.
I never use shutter speed because it's always 180 degrees,
which is always gonna be double
that of your frame rate.
Now with shutter angle,
if you close it down to, say, 90 degrees,
then it's gonna give you
that really jittery-looking footage.
And if you open it up to, say, 360 degrees,
it's gonna give you that really blurry, dreamy quality,
lots of motion blur.
So if you do decide to introduce more motion blur,
do it with a purpose.
So open up your shutter speed,
allow more light to hit the sensor per frame,
and then you can create this romantic, dreamy quality.
There might be different times when you're shooting
that this would make sense.
And then this opposite, if you want to close it down
and get that really jittery look, it ramps up the intensity,
and a lot of times this will be used for like action,
so super intense scenes, like a car chase scene in a film.
So if you have situations
where you wanna ramp up the energy,
then close down your shutter,
make the footage more jittery,
and it's gonna give that energetic quality to the footage
because there's no motion blur on those frames.
Now, one more tip I wanna give you,
if you just care about shutter speed
and you don't care about depth of field
so the blurry background,
or you don't care so much about where your ISO is set,
then you can use the shutter priority on your camera
and just set that in and then let your camera
automatically choose the rest of the settings.
Personally, I always like to shoot manual
on all my settings so I have full control of my camera.
However, if you're in a situation
where the light is constantly changing,
then you might wanna have an auto mode.
And instead of letting your camera decide the shutter speed,
you would use the shutter priority mode,
where you lock in your shutter speed or your shutter angle,
and then the camera decides the rest
so that you always know that you have proper shutter speed
when you're shooting in and automatic mode.
The two other settings that you can use
to control your exposure are aperture and ISO,
and we're gonna dig into those in another video.
So head right here to the rest of the videos
in my Mastering Your Camera series.
I'll see you over there.