Have you ever taken a picture with your point-and-shoot camera just to have the shutter speed be too slow and your image blurry? If you’re camera is left to figure out its exposure settings on its own, it will slow down your shutter in low-light conditions, which can sabotage your attempt to get a clear photo. You can use a show shutter speed to make great photographs though, with a little bit of planning.

Below are tips on how to take a few kinds of slow shutter pictures. These tips require your camera to stay very still, so handholding is not recommended. Pick up a basic tripod or something like the Gorillapod, reviewed earlier on this blog.

Light Trails

Everyone has seen those otherworldly pictures of ribbons of lights created by moving cars. These shots are eye catching and very easy to achieve. Make sure your camera is stable on your tripod, and use your manual or shutter priority setting to set your shutter speed to one second or more. Set your ISO as low as you can, so you’ll have less noise in your image. Depending on where you’re shooting, you might want to use manual focus, because the autofocus on most cameras struggles in low light. Beyond that, just experiment with different shutter speeds and angles until you get an image you like!


Life in the Fast Lane, by Chris Gin on Flickr

Painting with Light

Most people are used to shooting in whatever light happens to be falling on their subject, but if you take control of the light you can get some fantastic results. Painting with light is just what it sounds like. You set your camera to a long shutter speed, often several seconds, and you move light sources around your subject to put light where you want it in your image. Put your camera on a tripod and experiment with any light source you can find. Candles, flashlights or Christmas lights work great. You can even move through the picture without showing up in the final image if you make sure the light doesn’t illuminate you too much, and you wear dark clothes.


Rocco plays light cello, by fPat on Flickr

Bright Nights

On nights that are well lit by the moon you can take long shutter speed pictures that look like they were taken during the day. This is a fun way to capture movement that you wouldn’t be able to capture with long, daytime shutter speeds.


Moonlight, by Vimages on Flickr