What is Shutter Speed and Shutter Angle?
In: Technology
Shutter speed is the amount of time a camera shutter is open, usually measured in seconds. Typical figures are 1/100 s (0.01 s) or 1/1000 s (0.001 s).
Shutter angle is used for motion cameras. It tells you how much of the time the shutter is open with 360° (a full circle) meaning open all the time (impossible) and 180° meaning open half the time (typical for cinema movies). If you have a 24 frame-per-second movie camera then a shutter angle of 180° implies a shutter speed of 1/48 s. This is relatively slow and it means that fast-moving objects appear blurry which helps to hide the low frame rate.
Keeping a constant shutter angle means that motion blur stays matched to the frame rate you’re shooting at. So using a shutter speed of 1/120 s for 60 fps is a reasonable choice. Using lower shutter angles can result in stuttery motion.
The use of shutter angle terminology comes from cinema cameras in which the shutter was a rotating disc, so it actually had an angle that was open to control the exposure.
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