Understanding shutter speed fractions

Shutter Speed = Fractions

To understand shutter speeds fully, you also need to understand how fractions work. More specifically, it’s important that you understand the relationship between fractions and your camera’s shutter speed setting.

The faster or shorter your shutter speed, the less light that is let in to your camera’s sensor. Therefore, to use a fast shutter speed, you also need a lot of natural light (sunlight) or a flash, to ensure your images don’t turn out too dark or underexposed.

On the otherhand, the slower or longer your shutter speed, the more light that is let in to your camera’s sensor. This is great for low light situations, but not so good if you have a moving subject where you want to freeze action.

So how do you know if your camera is set on a fast or slow shutter speed? This is where understanding fractions is important.

For example, if you had your camera set on a 1 second shutter speed and noticed the photographs were too light or overexposed, you would need to set a faster / shorter speed. 10 times faster than 1 second is shown as 1/10 in fractions. Depending on your camera set up, it may display this as either 1/10 or simply as a numeral 10.

Now if you wanted to set a speed 10 times faster again, you would change your shutter speed to 1/100 or 100 on some camera’s. So from these examples you can conclude that 1/100 is a faster shutter speed than 1/10. The faster the shutter speed, the more natural light or flash light that will be required.

For more examples on fractions and how they relate to your camera’s shutter speed, I recommend watching the video tutorial below: