The shutter speed on your camera can do several different things. It can affect the quality of the focus in your image. It can allow more or less light into your image. It can show motion and action. Or it can freeze a moment in time. Learning to adjust your shutter speed to affect the Exposure of your image can be tricky for beginners, but I am going to share some important ways shutter speed work for your image. If you are interested in Exposure and how the different pieces of the Exposure triad work, you can read more in my post Exposure: A Basic Explanation for Beginners. I give a basic tutorial of aperture in Aperture: A Basic Explanation for Beginners.

Exposure is determined three things:  

1. The amount of light allowed in to the camera. (APERTURE)
2. The length of time that light is allowed into the camera. (SHUTTER SPEED)
3. The sensitivity of your camera to that light. (ISO)

Shutter speed determines how long light is allowed to enter the camera. It is expressed most commonly in fractions of seconds. 1/60 shutter speed means the shutter is open a longer amount of time than 1/125. This means that if I have a darker situation, I might use a slower shutter speed, 1/60, to allow more light in to the camera. If I have a very bright situation such as full sun, I may use a faster shutter speed, 1/250 or even 1/640. 

In the examples below you will see a difference in the vibrancy of color and depth of color, just by speeding the shutter speed from 1/250 to 1/640. This was a bright clear afternoon. Even with a shutter speed of 1/250 on the left, the image appears washed out and less vibrant. By speeding my shutter speed to 1/640, I achieved more vibrant and deeper color. 

Fair question. It's easy to understand that if you have something moving fast and you want to "FREEZE" that motion, You will speed up your shutter speed to freeze the motion. If you want to show motion and have a motion blur, you will slow your shutter speed. 

I typically try to use at least 1/125 shutter speed and normally 1/250 shutter speed for portraits. It helps get a clean crisp focus with less motion blur. 

Below are some shot I took with a 1/125 shutter speed because I was shooting objects that will move quick! ANIMALS AND KIDS. I wanted to Freeze them, before they moved! All of these shots were inside with indoor lighting. So, with my aperture opened up to let in light, I was able to use a faster shutter speed to compensate for wanting a sharp focus on my moving targets! For full disclosure, I did use on camera flash for these as well. Notice that bokeh or shallow depth of field? That's because of the wide open aperture. The two of my sweet baby boy Teller, were shot with a 35mm AF-S Nikkor f1.8 lens. My handsome nephew's picture was taken with an 85mm AF-S Nikkor f1.8. I rented both of these lenses from Lensrentals.com. You can read about my experiences renting lenses on these posts HERE.

Full disclosure: The links above for my amazon affiliated link. Blogging and keeping this adventure going is time consuming and I decided if I could make a penny or two, then what the heck? Links will be for items I have used or want to use and review! Thanks for using my links! I appreciate the help!

So I am a little late in posting this review. The Christmas and New Year holidays have thrown me way off balance! Family functions, work, and fun things can wear a body out! My best learned advice for surviving the Holidays to help you next year? Remember you can't keep everybody happy! 
And.....drum roll, please........Don't forget to return the lenses that you rented! I did, there will be more on that later!

In my previous posts Rent Vs. Buy, and ATS Rental review talked about how this photography venture can be a really expensive experience. So since I STILL haven't won the lottery, married a rich man (I kind of like the one I have anyway), or inherited a huge windfall from my not rich parents, I have to see if renting lenses to try new things is a more feasible option. Heck, I figure most of you are like me! 

Renting from LensRentals.com, was a pretty painless process. They had the lenses that I wanted in stock for the dates I wanted. I rented them, got a confirmation email, and all was well. My communication with their customer service was very pleasant and accommodating. I put a lot of emphasis on customer service and Lensrentals.com did well in this regard.

Communication  was very personable and nice. Items were packaged safely and I felt like stuff was really protected when I shipped back. 
Remember when I said don't forget to ship your lenses back when you've rented them? Well, here is where Lens Rentals really shined! I was supposed to ship back on Thursday the 24th. Well, duh, I had a houseful of people and we were doing our family Christmas that day because as a nurse, guess what? I was working Christmas day. So, the box got pushed aside, moved behind a chair, and because it wasn't wrapped in shiny paper and begging to be opened by a smiling face, it was forgotten. I didn't get it shipped back until the 28th! Well, I don't know if this is their usual policy or if they were feeling full of Christmas Spirit, but they didn't charge me for the extra days! Woohoo! Thanks LensRentals.com!

 Well, I previously only rented from ATSrentals.com so any comparison I make will be with them. Getting my package from Lensrentals,com wasn't all warm and fuzzy like Grandma had sent me a surprise. No real concrete things that are absolutely necessary to provide a good experience to complain about, though. So there were no Jelly Beans in my package and they didn't send shipping tape. Thats not a deal breaker. Even though, since all my tape had been ripped off packages earlier, and I had even used what shipping tape I had in the house to wrap the last few presents, I had to go out and buy more. Not a huge drawback, since I would need some in the house anyway, but.......
I really do like Jelly Beans.... 

Sure, I will depend on the availability of the lenses I want to rent, and if there are other shipping options other than FedEx. I have to drive nearly 15 miles to get to the nearest FedEx place. UPS is a lot more convenient for me.