Posted by Jim Hutchison on October 4, 2006 at 4:37 PM
I've got a new Canon 30D rig, and noticed that long tripod expusures get more blurry the longer I expose the shot for. My technique is OK; I tracked it down to needing to disable I.S. Is this typical, or should I be replacing the lens?
Posted by Adam Schallau on October 4, 2006 at 4:46 PM
What lens are you using? Some lenses with earlier versions of IS need to have it disabled when shooting with a tripod.
Posted by Jim Hutchison on October 4, 2006 at 4:48 PM
It's a "EFS 17-85" I.S. & USM. Came with the camera...
Posted by Adam Schallau on October 4, 2006 at 4:56 PM
I forgot to mention that IS should be turned off when doing long exposures. If you have your owner's manual turn to page E-7 for some useful info. If the problem only occurs with long exposures your lens is most likely working properly.
Posted by Jim Hutchison on October 4, 2006 at 4:59 PM
News to me... I guess I should RTFM a little closer.
Thanks Adam!
Posted by Adam Schallau on October 4, 2006 at 5:00 PM
Hi Jim
I hope you've also turned on "Noise reduction during long exposure" using custom functions in 30D.
Gautham
http://gauths-pix.blogspot.com/
Posted by Jim Hutchison on October 5, 2006 at 2:48 AM
I did that soon after reading the manual; that in addition to figuring out mirror lock-up. That was my cunundrum... here I've got the mirror locked up, using a remote trigger, and on a sturdy locked-down tripod, and the friggin picture is blurred.
So ya, it didn't take long to figure out that turning off IS did the trick. I just wasn't sure if that was standard practice or not.
Glad you figured it out. Personally I turn off the noise reduction during long exposures as I hate waiting for the function to work (as long as the original exposure!) and I can do better noise reduction post-production if necessary but I have found with Canon cameras that noise probelmes don't really occur unless you are doing exposures longer than 15 minutes. With noise reduction turned off I can do twice as many exposures (light painting etc) as I can with the friggin feature turned on! Darwin
Many of the IS lenses need to have IS turned off on the tripod. This is especially true of the cheaper ones.
The super teles 300/2.8 IS and bigger, for sure are designed to work with IS on a tripod. Some other lenses are as well, but I don't have a list of which are and which aren't. For the ones which are intended for use on a tripod, I've read that you're supposed to engage the IS (by holding the shutter halfway) for a full second before shooting, to let the system properly detect the tripod and make the correct adjustments.
-Paul
Posted by Jim Hutchison on October 7, 2006 at 2:18 AM
Thanks everyone...
I took some long exposures last night with IS turned off, and they were great. So obviously I have a cheaper lens, which is OK because I know how to use it now...
Discussion
10 repliesThanks Adam!
I hope you've also turned on "Noise reduction during long exposure" using custom functions in 30D.
Gautham
http://gauths-pix.blogspot.com/
So ya, it didn't take long to figure out that turning off IS did the trick. I just wasn't sure if that was standard practice or not.
The super teles 300/2.8 IS and bigger, for sure are designed to work with IS on a tripod. Some other lenses are as well, but I don't have a list of which are and which aren't. For the ones which are intended for use on a tripod, I've read that you're supposed to engage the IS (by holding the shutter halfway) for a full second before shooting, to let the system properly detect the tripod and make the correct adjustments.
-Paul
I took some long exposures last night with IS turned off, and they were great. So obviously I have a cheaper lens, which is OK because I know how to use it now...