In photography the shutter-release button (sometimes just shutter release or shutter button) is a push-button found on many cameras, used to take a picture. When pressed, the shutter of the camera is "released", so that it opens to capture a picture, and then closes, allowing an exposure time as determined by the shutter speed setting (which may be automatic). Some cameras also utilize an electronic shutter, as opposed to a mechanical shutter.
The shutter-release button is one of the most basic features of a handheld camera. Camera phones that lack a physical button for this purpose use a virtual button on the virtual keyboard.
The term "release" comes from old mechanical shutters that were "cocked" or "tensioned" by one lever, and then "released" by another. In modern-day photography, this notion is less meaningful, so is gradually falling from use.
Famous quotes containing the words shutter and/or button:
“And there is nothing in the eye,
Shut shutter of the mineral man
Who takes the fatherless dark to bed,
The acid sky to the brain-pan;
And calls the crows to peck his head.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side?—from sorrow to sorrow?—to button up one cause of vexation!—and unbutton another!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)