Shutter Speed in Nature Photography

This ‘doubling’ is similar to the doubling of the aperture settings also double or halve as the amount of light that is let in increases or decreases.

One second is slow while 1/1000 is a fast shutter-speed. The faster the shutter speed the shorter the time the shutter stays open and less light gets in.

And just like with aperture, we can use our shutter speed creatively to get better pictures.

Action

For example if you have 50mm lens then 1/60th of a second is the minimum you should use and if you are shooting with a 200mm lens you will then want to shoot with a least 1/250 second.

If you are using a crop sensor such as the Nikon D300 or D7000 you will want to increase these speeds by at least 50% (to 1/100 sec. for the 50mm and 1/500 sec for the 200mm lens) as the image is 50% bigger than on a full-frame camera body and so movement and resulting blur will also be increased.

If your lens has image stabilization or vibration reduction then the above rule doesn't apply as much because IS and VR permit the use of shutter-speeds 2–4 stops slower.

Please keep in mind that IS and VR do not prevent motion blur caused by the movement of the subject or by extreme movements of the camera. VR and IS are designed only to reduce blur that results from normal minor shaking of a lens due to hand-held shooting.

Blurs

In some cases you will be able to hand-hold the camera but just make sure you limit the up and down motion of your hands.

Blurring moving water could take anything from 1 to 5 seconds and star trails could be hours. Here a support is not-negotiable!

For star trails the camera would be set on 'bulb', which lets you keep the shutter open for as long as you lock the remote cable release down.

So when considering what speed to set your shutter on you should first ask yourself whether anything in your scene is moving and how you’d like to capture that movement - do you want to freeze the action or get artistic blurs.

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