CAD
Let’s talk about shutter speed
Photographers switching over to video are often confused at first about shutter speed. In photography, our shutter speed is very flexible – we can often set our creative parameters like ISO and aperture and then let the camera choose the shutter speed, without any issues. Of course, if you’re photographing fast-moving objects you will need a specific, fast shutter, or if you are photographing water movement and want blur you’ll want a slow shutter speed, etc.
Underwater, many photographers use strobes, and because the motion is frozen by the strobes, the shutter speed doesn’t need to change. 1/160 or 1/200 is usually where my shutter speed stays when I’m using strobes underwater, unless I’m creating motion blur.
However, for video, the requirements change for us. This is because with moving images, some shutter speeds are more representative of what motion looks like, naturally, in real life. When you wave your hand in front of your face, you see some level of blur to the hand – if you shot video of this with a 1/8000 shutter speed, it would be unnaturally devoid of motion blur. We want to mimic what the eye sees but creating the right level of motion blur, using our shutter speed.
To accommodate for this, underwater video follows an established videography rule.
Your shutter speed should be 2 times your frame rate.
If you’re shooting 30 frames per second (FPS), this means you want a shutter speed of 1/60. If you’re shooting 60 frames per second, you want a shutter speed of 1/120. This relationship of shutter speed to frame rate is also known as shutter angle.
- Choosing Your First Underwater Camera in 2026 – May 15, 2026
- Strobes or video lights? A head-to-head comparison for the underwater photographer – October 23, 2023
- Shooting Video AND Stills on the Same Dive [Guide] – April 6, 2023