What is shutter speed all about?

After I posted the link for my blog, many guys got back to me asking

"Hey what exactly is shutter speed? And why the heck do I need to control it?"

Some people asked me.

"What is the difference between different shutter speeds?"

Most of the time, when we used the classical camera [SLRs please excuse!]. We always wanted our flash working. We waited for approx 10-15 seconds between two photos, till the flash was 'recharged' back to life. I still recall we used to get a roll, rather still do get a good quality roll for INR 150. and which has only 36 pics capacity. If you are lucky you could get to 40 even! but that's the max, and the mode used to be either of the four mentioned in the previous post, but either ways the flash always existed.

2.5 seconds	4 seconds
1/40th of a second

Now you can see 3 different pics of the same place, same time, but different shutter speeds. The shutter is a small cover in front of the hole on your camera [the place where you have the lens]. The speed is the amount of time, the shutter will take to close again after opening.

The more the time you keep is open, the more light is captured on the film. It keeps adding the light to the surface and due to prolonged exposure, the light looks brighter. Hence for a dark area, where there is a small source of light, we allow a longer exposure to the film capturing the true colours.

But at the same time, one has to be careful, not to overexpose the film, else it'll become white. You need to try various combinations to get the right brightness of the photograph.