Shutter speed is how the camera controls the amount of time that your film or your digital sensor is exposed to a light. In this camera, I am using my old Hasselblad, because it has got a really good demonstration of that. As you go from a fairly slow shutter speed, this is about 1/8th of a second, we can vary that up to, where we go fairly quick, to this is 1/250th of a second.
So as you could probably see that was letting through very little light compared to 1/8th of a second. As you step through, what are called stops, it changes the amount of light which hits the film by half as much, or twice as much, as you are going from 1/4 of a second to 1/2 a second, you are letting in twice as much light.
As if you are going from 1/125th of a second to 1/250th of a second, you are letting in half as much light. As you go to the opposite way, it's the same thing from 1/250th of a second to 1/125th of a second, you are letting in twice as much light and so on. They are set up in what are called stops, so you have a controlled way to determine how much exposure you are giving your film or your digital sensor.
Now the practical affect of that, is that really slow shutter speed does beautiful things like flowing water; you have seen the waterfall shots where you have got the soaky looking water, that's a slow shutter speed. You have seen athletes frozen in mid air, as they are like doing a high jump, that's a very fast shutter speed.
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