Shutter Speeds

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I’ve not long read the book Understanding Exposure and I think I may need to read it again. However in the mean time I thought I would ask a simple question that will inevitably result in a complicated answer.

I understand technically how the ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed triangle can have the same quantitative value but give different results.

I currently use the AV setting a lot. I use F2.8 – F5.6 for isolating the subject, F8 or F11 for a general shot with no regard for DOF and F16 or F22 for back to front sharpness.

Now switching over to a manual setting I have to think if it’s going to be an aperture led shot or a shutter speed led shot. If I go with aperture led because the picture relies on DOF, I set the desired aperture and adjust the shutter until I get the right exposure on the slider at the bottom of the viewfinder.

My question is if I go with a shutter speed led shot are there rules of thumb for speed settings? For example should you not go below 1/60th without a tripod? Should I be aiming at 1/125th or 1/250th for people to retain sharpness? What if it’s a dark room at a party?

I generally tend to leave the ISO set at 200, unless light conditions are bad.

Are there any trusted settings you tend to gravitate towards?
 
First ... you do not want to be going past f11 ... you will encounter diffraction, which will degrade your image.

The rule of thumb for hand held shutter speed is 1/focal length so for a 100mm lens 1/100 sec, a 50mm lens 1/50 sec.

Set the aperture and shutter speed you want, then get the exposure correct by adjusting the ISO, you can do that with digital ... we were not so lucky when using film. :D

1/200 should be fine for avoiding movement blur from human subjects.
 
Blasted said:
I’ve not long read the book Understanding Exposure and I think I may need to read it again. However in the mean time I thought I would ask a simple question that will inevitably result in a complicated answer.

I understand technically how the ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed triangle can have the same quantitative value but give different results.

I currently use the AV setting a lot. I use F2.8 – F5.6 for isolating the subject, F8 or F11 for a general shot with no regard for DOF and F16 or F22 for back to front sharpness.

Now switching over to a manual setting I have to think if it’s going to be an aperture led shot or a shutter speed led shot. If I go with aperture led because the picture relies on DOF, I set the desired aperture and adjust the shutter until I get the right exposure on the slider at the bottom of the viewfinder.

My question is if I go with a shutter speed led shot are there rules of thumb for speed settings? For example should you not go below 1/60th without a tripod? Should I be aiming at 1/125th or 1/250th for people to retain sharpness? What if it’s a dark room at a party?

I generally tend to leave the ISO set at 200, unless light conditions are bad.

Are there any trusted settings you tend to gravitate towards?
Click to expand...



To make life easy a general rule of thumb is use at least the same shutter speed as your focal length. ie. Using a 100mm focal length don't go below 1/100th sec. For a 50mm not below 1/50th sec.

Now image stabalization will let you go lower and some people can handhold even slower, its just a guide.
 
Martyn... said:
First ... you do not want to be going past f11 ... you will encounter diffraction, which will degrade your image.

The rule of thumb for hand held shutter speed is 1/focal length so for a 100mm lens 1/100 sec, a 50mm lens 1/50 sec.

Set the aperture and shutter speed you want, then get the exposure correct by adjusting the ISO, you can do that with digital ... we were not so lucky when using film. :D

1/200 should be fine for avoiding movement blur from human subjects.
Click to expand...



LOL you beat me to it and we both used the same example focal lengths :)
 
Thanks,

I did read somewhere that when using the focal length as a guide on a crop body you should also take into account the crop factor of 1.6. So for a focal length of 100mm it would infact be (1*1.6)/100 giving a minimum of 160th of a second. Is this right or waffle?

In the understanding exposure book he states that going upto F22 causes no problems.
 
Thanks, I will have a read thorugh later on, although my next question will be if I'm shooting landscapes and I can't go above F11, is that going to give front to back sharpness?
 
Blasted said:
Thanks, I will have a read thorugh later on, although my next question will be if I'm shooting landscapes and I can't go above F11, is that going to give front to back sharpness?
Click to expand...

What camera, and what lens ?

Here is an online depth of field calculator LINK, I would have thought anything over 35mm on full frame (24mm on crop) you would be fine for getting everything in focus.

.
 
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Blasted said:
I did read somewhere that when using the focal length as a guide on a crop body you should also take into account the crop factor of 1.6. So for a focal length of 100mm it would infact be (1*1.6)/100 giving a minimum of 160th of a second. Is this right or waffle?
Click to expand...

ahh I was wondering this yesterday whilst trying to explain to my nearly 8yo lad, his lens is 55-200mm so I just said at 55mm you want to look at 1/100+ but you might get away with 1/60 and at 200mm you want to go 1/320+ but you might get away with 1/200..

he got a corking shot of a ladybird on a flower so I mustve said something right :thinking:
 
Martyn... said:
I am sure that he is referring to film cameras ;)

Read this LINK it explains it.



.
Click to expand...

Although in the book he is talking bout film, he has videos on Youtube where he is using digital and f/22, mainly for macro.
 
Agreed with the information/advice above and in addition.....

ISO settings...... Always try and use the lowest ISO, if you're outside on a bright day use ISO100.

If the light's not as good and you can't get a quick enough shutter speed bump the ISO up until you can acheive the shutter speed/f-stop you want/need.

I know everyone's different and I could be wrong but I always change the ISO last.

For instance if I'm shooting a rugby match, I'd rather get some noisy images that I can clean up in PP rather than a blurry mess that'll get deleted ;)
 
Sigh - this myth keeps coming up.

Diffraction really is nowhere near as bad as people make out, especially on a top quality lens you can shoot quite happily at F22 if you want to. Right, moving on....


As for ISO - this absolutely depends on your camera how much you can play about with it. Older cameras don't respond well to higher iso's, but in the last couple of years there's been a revolution in this area.

Find out about your particular sensor - they all have a value at which they have the widest sensitivity range, which is the optimum to use. Most sensors this will be around 100-200, but the recent Sony sensors used in Nikon/Pentax/Sony cameras only go down to 200 anyway (without the pointless software "expansion" modes), and are at their most sensitive at ISO 400 - and will happily shoot up to ISO 1600 before ANY noise creeps in.

I used to lock my camera at ISO 400, but recently I now am either in "Auto 200-800" or 3200/6400, depending if I'm out in the sun or hiding in the dark... but that's because I can on my particular camera :p
 
Just to throw a spanner in the works.

The shutter speed to lens calculation is actually:

Shutter speed = Focal length x Crop Factor

So, if you have an APS-C sensor, which the majority of us do you will have a crop factor of around 1.5 (it's 1.6 for Canon).

So, with a 100mm lens, you have a virtual focal length of 150mm, so you need to be shooting at 1/150 of a sec (I think the actual speed on cameras is 1/160)

This of course is assuming that you are hand held and do not have any form of image stabilisation.

Steve
 
flossie said:
Sigh - this myth keeps coming up.

Diffraction really is nowhere near as bad as people make out, especially on a top quality lens you can shoot quite happily at F22 if you want to. Right, moving on....
Click to expand...

Hardly a myth ... it exists ... however I take your point, and have seen suggestion that it can be sharpened out of the image, however I would have thought f16 to be the limit on a crop sensor.
 
Bryan Peterson says some strange things in that book :thinking: Read what he says about histograms and white balance :cuckoo: (Clue, it's extremely brief, like one sentence each - I'm serious! And that's in a book about exposure... :shrug:)

Also on diffraction too. If you can't see what happens to image quality at f/22 on crop format, then you have wasted your money buying a decent camera. It starts to hit hard at f/16, though when you should ever want to go that high is extremely rare. You get so much DoF on a crop format camera at lower f/numbers it's just not necessary.

Jelster has clarified the hand-holding rule, but it's only a rough guide. Some people can do better than that, others not. With IS and a shorter lens you can use quite long speeds saefly, but IS does nothing to stop subject movement and you can quickly run into problems there.

As a personal rule of thumb, I never go longer than 1/30sec when shooting people. Even just standing around or chatting, you will get blurred hands for example. 1/60sec is safer, but sometimes a bit of blur here and there is okay, even good, but not on faces.
 
Thanks for the replies.

For what its worth I use a canon 450D and a Canon 17-55 2.8.

I don't like to use high ISO as it gets quite noisy and I do like to shoot low down to isolate people objects. Recently I have been looking to shoot more landscape hence my question about F numbers and back to front sharpness.

The first question I asked relating to shutter speed is for when I want to shoot people in moving environments. I was looking for some quick do's and dont's like focal length times crop factor for a rough guide minimum shutter speed. By understanding shutter speed more I can get more out of shooting manual.

Thanks.
 
Thanks for the info in this thread, it's reely helped me soildify things. Could one of you kind folk explain the difference between a full frame sensor and a crop sensor?

Is is that a FF will record what's in the viewfinder, whereas the crop sensor...well...crops that image?
 
malo50 said:
Thanks for the info in this thread, it's reely helped me soildify things. Could one of you kind folk explain the difference between a full frame sensor and a crop sensor?

Is is that a FF will record what's in the viewfinder, whereas the crop sensor...well...crops that image?
Click to expand...

No, a full frame sensor I believe refers to a 35mm sensor, much like the days when 35mm film was used.

A cropped sensor is smaller, for example a Canon cropped sensor give an effective magnification of 1.6 so that gives an 18mm lens the field of view of a 29mm focal length on a FF sensor.

Full Frame sensors will generally give a clearer less noisy image and are generally the choice of portait photographers
 
malo50 said:
Thanks for the info in this thread, it's reely helped me soildify things. Could one of you kind folk explain the difference between a full frame sensor and a crop sensor?

Is is that a FF will record what's in the viewfinder, whereas the crop sensor...well...crops that image?
Click to expand...

Most film SLR cameras were designed to use 35mm film. What we call "Full Frame" DSLRs use a sensor equal to the format of original 35mm film, so when you use a 50mm lens, it actually has exactly the same field of view on both cameras. However, most digital SLR cameras have a sensor which is smaller than 35mm film, and therefore give a narrower field of view for any given lens.

In short, this has the effect of making your lens's "longer" in practical terms; this size difference is known as the "crop factor" and you need to multiply your focal length by his figure to give you your 35mm equivalent. Nikons have a crop factor of 1.5, Canons 1.6.

So, the general rule of thumb for a minimum hand holding shutter speed has to be extended. Normally, a 100mm lens would require a min speed of 1/100 sec, but when the crop factor is taken into account, that becomes 1/160 sec.

HTH.

Steve
 
Here's a representative image from a FF & Crop boy the un- shaded area is the image from a crop body

sensorsizes_ex1.jpg


Have a read here for more info on crop & FF sensors
 
Russ, Steve and Paul...thank you, really appreciate your time guys.
Martin
 
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