I met a group of young photographers in Brussels (Belgium) few days ago. I overheard them discussing various aspects of photography so I joined them of course. At some point, they got to the point of talking about exposure as if they were talking about shutter speed (for example that the exposure was 1/60 sec.). To be honest, I was confused at first and I started to question my knowledge on the differences between exposure and shutter speed. Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to do a quick and quiet analysis in my head and to assure myself that I was right in the first place:

Exposure is NOT the same as shutter speed!

I won’t go in detail but I will just give a quick summary to those of you who are still confused a little: exposure is the total amount of light that passes on a film (or a digital sensor). That total amount of light depends on the aperture and on the shutter speed.

Note: Some photographers use ‘exposure time’ as a ‘shutter speed’. Although this is correct (shutter speed defines for how long a film or a sensor are exposed, therefore ‘exposure time’), I personally don’t use ‘exposure time’ because it’s very much different from ‘exposure’ itself but can create much confusion.

Article Picture: This is another picture taken at the Cemetery de Molenbeek in Brussels (Bruxelles), Belgium (see google map). Previous one was posted with THIS article. I saw this statue while walking around the cemetery and I was amazed with it’s look. EXIF: Nikon D90, Shutter Speed: 1/1600 sec., f/1.8, Aperture Priority, ISO: 200, EV Bias: +0.7