As a photography enthusiast, you may have just started learning certain concepts on your camera. However, to change and adjust your camera’s shutter speed, you should know what it is and what it does, and after you decide which type to apply in your shots, you should make adjustments in this direction. Once you have all this background information, you can easily change the shutter speed on your Nikon in just 3 easy steps.

General Information about Shutter Speed

First, you should have certain background knowledge of what you will adjust or change on your camera by talking about the shutter speed and what it does.

What Is Shutter Speed & What Does It Do?

To explain it briefly, shutter speed is the mechanical speed of the number moving on the screen in this direction of the photos taken from the moment you press the shutter button.

Since the number of shutters can also be considered as the car’s mileage, it becomes a significant figure, especially in second-hand camera purchases. Naturally, this also requires taking into account the effect of the camera’s shutter speed, as such values can inform how much the camera has been used.

In other words, the shutter speed of a camera refers to how long the shutter is left open before taking a picture. Notably, it is measured in seconds and significantly impacts how well your photographs turn out.

How to Find the Shutter Speed of My Camera?

Generally speaking, on your display panel, there are figures like 1/2, 1/250, 1/50, 1/60, 1/500, 2″, or bulb— on specific digital cameras that indicate how quickly or how long the shutter is open before closing. Likewise, a well-exposed image will often have a quicker shutter speed for clarity and sharpness, whereas a low-light or night image typically has a slower shutter speed to let in more light.

Types of Shutter Speed

Higher shutter speeds result in less light exposure since you have to leave the shutter open for a shorter period. In light of this, for everyday photographic purposes, faster shutter speeds are preferable during the day, whereas slower shutter speeds are preferable during the night.

• Slow Shutter Speed: Generally, a lengthy shutter speed is 1 second or more. Being like ½ or ¼, a slow shutter speed, by contrast, maybe a portion of a second. Supportively, the slowest shutter speed you can utilize without utilizing a remote shutter button is approximately 30 seconds, according to your camera.
• Fast Shutter Speed: The shutter speed that is quick and sufficiently can capture motion is a common term for a fast shutter speed. Discussing a rapid shutter speed, photographers usually relate to tiny fractions of seconds, like 1/250^th of a second or faster.

And again, being contingent on the device’s features, the mechanical shutter on the majority of DSLR and compact cameras allows for shutter speeds of up to 1/4000 in a second. However, with mechanical shutters, some of the most sophisticated cameras may capture images as quickly as 1/8000 of a second and even quicker with electronic shutters.

How to Change Shutter Speed on Nikon?

Shutter speed settings, which can vary from model to model and vary with your camera being manual or automatic, are also valid for Nikon.

• Step #1 – Decide What You Want: You should start by deciding on one of the fast or slow shutter speeds mentioned above. Although the choice between these two depends mainly on the light of the place, as a photography enthusiast, you decide which one you want. But to show the way, it is recommended to use a fast shutter speed for bright areas and a slow shutter speed for closed and darker areas.
• Step #2 –Put Your Machine in Shutter-Priority Auto Mode: In this mode, you can control your shutter speed and freeze motion for fast shutter speed shots and blur motion features for slow shutter speed shots.
• Step # 3 – Rotate the Mode Dial to “S”: Using the dial or the arrows on your camera, you can adjust the speed of the shutter mode. For faster speeds, rotate the command dial to the right; for slower speeds, rotate it to the left. As mentioned, the most general shutter speed is 1/1000, 1/250, 1/30, ½, ¼, and so on.  

And that’s it! You’ve changed and adjusted your camera’s shutter speed in three steps.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the fractions of a second are used to describe shutter speeds; supportively, the shutter is exposed for one one-thousandth of a second when the frame rate is 1/1000. So, to find the shutter speed on your camera, you can see how long the shutter stays open per second before the lens closes by looking at the parts with 1/2, 1/250, 1/50, and similar numbers.

In this context, the shutter speed, which can be the mileage of your camera, is divided into two types; fast and slow. The fast one is mostly preferred during the day and outdoors in lighted areas, while the slow one is used for indoor and low-light shots.

If we come to how the shutter speed is adjusted in Nikon as the main question, we can say that this adjustment can be made in 3 simple steps;

First of all, after deciding what type of shutter speed you want, it will be enough to set your camera to the appropriate mode and turn your camera’s arrows or dial to the left for slow shutter adjustment and to the right for fast shutter speed and to adjust in this context.