Photography

Shutter Priority

The Shutter Speed Priority mode, abbreviated as Tv allows the user to select a shutter speed while the camera calculates the proper aperture value for a scene based on the specified shutter speed and sensor ISO. As with Automatic or Aperture Priority mode, the camera uses the same algorithm to computer for the proper Exposure, only in this mode the camera has no control over the shutter speed.

Being able to select a shutter speed is useful to give your photos a certain amount of motion blur to depict movements in your photographs. A fast shutter speed will freeze your subject and everything in the picture. A waterfall for example will show details of each individual drop or squirt of water as if they were frozen. With a slightly slow shutter speed on the other hand, this will show a blurring image within the path of the water and will make the picture more alive as if the water is really moving.

Shutter priority may also be useful for night photography. If you are taking photos of still objects like buildings and the lighting is not so good, you can still get a clean picture using a very slow shutter speed even with a low ISO value. The long time that the shutter remains open allows it to capture the available details of the scene. However, since the camera's exposure algorithms is based on a 50% luminance level, the output will tend to be brighter than the actual scene so, it might be necessary to use an appropriate Exposure Compensation in order to get a result that is faithful to the actual scene.