Shutter Priority

This feature is useful when the speed of the subject is more important than its background. This setting allows you to choose the shutter speed while the camera chooses an optimal aperture for correct exposure. For example, if you want to freeze a fast moving train in your photograph, you need to use a shutter speed of at least 1/1000s. But if you want a more dynamic image—such as in the case of a helicopter hovering above the ground with its rotor still rotating—you need to use a slower shutter speed like 1/30s to capture the motion of the rotor. You can experiment with slow shutter speeds to get more dynamic images.

When photographing helicopters, the biggest challenge is to get the blur of its rotor blades. If the blades are frozen in air, it will look like a toy hung in the air. To record the blur in the photograph, you need to use a slow shutter speed. And since the background is not so important, we can forget about the aperture. So the best option in such a situation is the Shutter Priority mode.

Note that in some digital cameras, the shutter priority is denoted as 'S' and in some as 'TV'.