Shutter speeds

mjb123

mjb123

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Hay! Am i right in thinking that there is a rule of thumb for shutter speeds depending on distance! I've been taking some pics of birds the feathered type and there not coming out quite as sharp as I would of hoped! I'm getting good exposure but not sharp!! Thinking that when at the 500 end of the lens I may be using to faster speed!!
Any help or links would be appreciated!!
 
For hand holding, general guide is to use a 1/focal length. So a 50mm lens would require 1/50 and a 100mm lens would require 1/100 min as a general guide.

It gets murky after that though for a few reasons. Firstly you ought to take into account any crop factor that might apply to your camera, so a Nikon APS-C sensor with a crop factor of 1.5, you'd look for a min of 1/150s min on a 100mm lens.

Secondly, technique is a big factor. You may be a lot better or a lot worse than joe bloggs. You may also be able to stabalise the lens in some way using your surroundings.

And one last thing. Remember your subject matter is also a factor. 1/500 may or may not be too slow to freeze movement depending on how fast the movement is. If in doubt, get the shutter speed as high as you can.
 
I think the general rule is 1/focal-length for handheld. It's a rough figure though and will depend on how stable you can hold the lens and also how good any image stabilisation is. I just got my sigma 150-500 today and took this photo handheld. The camera picked iso3200 and 1/400 which was a good choice in the circumstance. I was just playing when he happened to land on the fence.

IMG_1062.jpg by grblades, on Flickr
 
The general rule of thumb as explained above, and depending on how good the stabiliser is can give you a bit of room to play with if the lighting isn't quite bright enough.

If you don't have a stabilised lens, then a monopod/tripod is a cheap (in comparison to a stabilised 500mm lens) easy way to get a crisp shot. This is presuming the bird isn't jittering around of course, not much you can do about that apart from making the shutter speed higher.
 
I am terrible at handheld shots, bird in the garden today and even with shutter speed at 1/320 still wasnt getting sharp images at 200mm had to up the iso to 1600 for a shutter speed of nearly 1/1000 before usable images. Its not a stabalised lens I might add and even though I practice my technique Im still cr@p :)

Steve
 
Also dont forget the higher the pixel count,also adds to the factor,with new higher counts,say like the Nikon D800 also Sony A77 and the Canon 5DmkIII,you will have to be more careful about camera shake :)
 
One thing I would urge you to do is practice good technique for hand-held shots. Tuck your arms into your side and stand in a firm position so you don't wobble. Lean against something solid if you can. And press the shutter release, don't jerk it.
 
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