Shutter Speed Priority

This setting it will be the complete opposite of F-Stop. You will set the Shutter Speed and the Camera will handle the F-Stop. The pit falls in using this alone is that it may give you a f/5.6 when you need a f/1.8, f/2.8 or f/16. You know what you want to capture in terms of the scene, the camera while smart, does not. You can use this setting to your advantage but for me it is a secondary setting.

An example of using Shutter Speed to your advantage would be:

While shooting a High School Football Game, the lighting is poor at best. You are set on F/2.8 where you want to be but the action is still blurred no matter what you do. In that instance you have the correct F-Stop but you need faster speed to capture the action. You look at the shot you just took and it gave you a Shutter Speed of 1/60 (60). I know I need more speed so I crank the speed up to 1/250 (250), take a shot and look again. Wow, there is no image, it totally black. I dial it back down until I can barely see an image on it. In this case it is 1/125 (125). This is where I am going to shoot the rest of the game. When I go home to process these images I will open them in Photoshop, duplicate the layers and lighten them in steps to bring the image back out. It’s crazy but it works. If you shoot enough you will run into this, but don’t be afraid to give it a go. There have been times when I have had to go with a f/2 lens and still have trouble getting the shot I want.

I typically do not use this Shutter Speed Priority as a main setting and I am racking my brain trying to remember if I ever have or have known anyone who has. Typically, I will use the F-Stop setting, read the Shutter Speed that it gives me. If I want to control it more from there I will go to Manual mode and lock in my settings and adjust them there until I get exactly what I want.

If anyone out there uses this as a main setting mode, feel free to email me an article and I will post it here. (with samples if possible)