This is the click you hear when you press the button to take a photo. You can adjust your shutter speed in the manual mode on your camera by turning the dial on top to the letter ‘M’.
Once here you can make your shutter very fast, or extremely slow. Each camera is different in how these settings are changed, but largely most use the main navigation dial on the front face of the camera or a rotating dial on the top of the camera to adjust the shutter.
The benefits of a fast shutter, such as having it appear as 1/1000 is that you can capture objects, animals or people that are moving very fast and have them appear still without any motion blur.
A slow shutter such as 0.5″ or 25 seconds is how you can capture more light, especially when in darker environments. Having the shutter set slower allows the sensor (the thing inside your camera that captures light) to be exposed to light for a longer period of time. A ver slow shutter is great for astrophotography or other kinds of night photography. Be aware though that with a slow shutter any bump or movement to the camera could cause blur, this is why using a tripod is always handy.
Aperture is a setting you can change in manual mode that affects how much light can enter the camera and how to create depths of field (essentially how to get an out of focus background behind a subject).
The aperture ring is inside your camera lens and it can become very narrow or very wide depending on your settings. A wide aperture will let in a lot of light where as a narrow one will let in as little light as possible. You can make it wider to let in a lot of light by selecting a low ‘f.stop’ number such as 1.8-2.5, or you can make it very narrow by using a higher number such as f.5-8 or above.
Wide apertures are great for night photography as they allow as much light in as possible. A narrow aperture is best for a bright sunny day as you don;t want your photos becoming over exposed and completely washed out.
The aperture also controls how shallow the depth of field in an image is. A wide aperture such as f1.8 will give a very narrow depth of field, this is great when shooting portraits as the subject is the main focus. A narrower aperture such as f.5-8 is great when shooting landscapes as it allows all of the image to be crisp and in focus.
How do these two things work together?
The shutter speed and aperture work in unison to create the great images you desire. When you have a fast shutter, this lets in less light, so to compensate for this you need a wider aperture that will let in the light.
For example if you were shooting at a shutter speed of 1/2500, this is extremely fast and wont allow much light in, to brighten the image you would need to put your aperture setting at around f1.4 to f.2.5.
If you are using a slower shutter during the day time and your images are too bright, you will need a narrower aperture such as f.5 or f.6 to stop too much light hitting your cameras sensor.
