Photo Challenge Day 3 -- Clouds and Shutter Speed

Today's photography lesson was about shutter speed, which is something I read up on when we first got the DSLR in December.  In fact, shutter speed shows such immediate, noticeable results that it was the first photography skill I felt I could really grasp.  I've done a bit of playing around with it before, but now I've tracked my "playing" so that I could share as part of this year's blogging (and blog goals! Yay Day Three!).

Shutter speed refers to how long the camera takes to record an image (essentially).  It can be in the tenths or hundredths of a second or, if on a tripod, the shutter can stay open for several seconds to absorb more light and capture an interesting shot.  The setting tends to be written like this -- 1/60 = one-sixtieth of a second, 1/10 = one-tenth of a second. On a Canon DSLR, like what we have, shutter speed can be controlled on the Manual (M) setting or the Shutter Priority (TV) setting.

It is amazing what a difference shutter speed can make!  Focus on that, more than on the fact that Lotus wasn't really posing for the camera today...

Picture 1 -- M (Manual mode), 1/60, f/4.5, ISO400

Picture 2 -- M, 1/40 (see the difference in the lighting?), f/4.5, ISO 400

Picture 3-- M, 1/100 (so dark! probably because I was taking pictures on a cloudy day), f/4.5, ISO 400

Picture 4 -- M, 1/100, f/4.5, ISO 800 (changed the ISO to see if that made a difference; it's brighter!)

I switched to the TV (shutter priority) setting instead of full manual so that it would choose my f-stop and ISO but I could still control the shutter speed.

Picture 5 -- TV, 1/60, auto

Picture 6 -- TV, 1/250, auto.

Picture 7 -- TV, 1/60, auto.

As you can see with the amount of light that is let in using a longer shutter speed, during times of low light it can be nice to use a slow shutter speed.  Since we've had the camera, it's been overcast or dreary most days, so I've been using a 1/80 shutter speed for most shots.

In the 30 Day Photo Challenge, I was supposed to take a picture of clouds.  Which I did.  You probably can't tell...as I said, it's been dreary.

And here are a few more photos just for fun:

What will tomorrow bring?