a study of shutter speed

FINALLY got out my tripod yesterday and "played" with shutter speeds. I feel comfortable with apertures; I mainly shoot in "aperture priority" mode now. I am interested in feeling just as comfortable with shutter speeds so that I can transition into complete manual mode. Since I can't count on my son's movements being perfectly duplicated, lol, I went with something a little more reliable to be able to compare the difference in shutter speeds. I put my camera on "shutter priority" so that I didn't have to worry with coordinating the correct aperture for this experiment. The first and last are where my camera maxed out. The fastest shutter speed I have is 1/6000 of a second and the slowest I have is 25 seconds (oops, wait, actually I should have 30 secs - I didn't go far enough). My indicator was blinking that my apertures wouldn't handle those shutter speeds, but I took the photos anyway for comparisons sake. The three in the middle are in what I'll call more "mid" range of shutter speeds. Honestly, I didn't have any reason for choosing those specific speeds, I just wanted to see how the flow of water would change with different lengths of shutter speed. With a slower shutter speed (i.e. longer time the shutter remains open), the water is smoother, almost mistier. With a faster shutter speed, the water (& bubbles that were being created from the water overflowing the glass) were captured crisper. I have a really neat shot that I edited from one of my faster shutter speeds that I will post tomorrow for "foto friday."







So, all that to say, get out there and experiment. The only way to truly know how your camera will handle the various settings is to use it!