Posted by Paul Bojan on January 25, 2011 at 4:22 PM
Hello everyone. I was wondering if I could get an opinion here. I have been reading allot about photography with zoom lenses. One thing mentioned is that you should, as a rule of thumb, shoot with the reciprocal shutter speed as your lens stop to avoid shake So is it safe to assume that when you are using your telephoto lens you should be in Shutter priority unless you specific goal is D.O.F control?
Posted by Paul Bojan on January 25, 2011 at 4:23 PM
Sorry..spelled lens wrong :)
Posted by John W. Wall on January 25, 2011 at 4:34 PM
If you're shooting with a 300mm lens at 1/300th sec., that might be fast enough to shoot hand-held, but it might not be fast enough to clearly capture your moving subject, so that's another consideration. Even shooting wide open, you might not have the shutter speed you want, in which case you need to crank up the ISO dial. I'm finally getting it through my thick skull that a "noisy" but sharp image is better than a "clean" but jiggly one.
Posted by Buck Ward on January 25, 2011 at 6:06 PM
Shooting at the reciprocal of the focal length is an old tried and true rule of thumb. I've even seen it recommended to shoot at the reciprocal of twice the focal length. You don't need to shoot in shutter priority to control your shutter speed, but if you're more comfortable with that, then by all means do.
With the advent of modern anti-shake systems - Canon's IS and Nikon's VR - you can hand hold at slower shutter speeds - according the the manufacturers, two, three, or even four stops slower. So if you are hand-holding a non-IS 300mm lens you would want to shoot at 1/300 or faster. (actually it would be probably be 1/250 or faster). With an IS or VR lens you're supposed to be able to hand-hold at 1/60 or even 1/30.
This will help minimize blurring due to camera shake, but if your subject is moving it won't help. For a bird in flight, for example, you probably want to shoot at least at 1/1000, probably faster depending on the bird, regardless of whether you are hand-holding or shooting from a tripod.
Posted by Brian Gatlin on January 25, 2011 at 6:11 PM
Hi Paul,
First, the minimum shutter speed you need depends a lot on how you're using the lens and what you're trying to capture. For example, if you're handholding, you should go for at least 1/focal length (1/500 for a 500mm), maybe even 1/focal length*2 (1/1000 for a 500mm). If you're using a monopod, you can get slower. I found, with practice, if I was sitting and carefully braced, I could get sharp shots at 1/160 with a monopod and a 700mm focal length. And if the big lens is locked down on a quality tripod, there's almost no limit--I've gotten razor sharp images at 1/2 second with mirror lockup and a tripod with 700mm.
[EDIT: I know that with new IS they say you should be able to handhold at much slower speeds, but I've generally found in my experience that for tack sharp, detailed photos, it's better to stick to those faster 1/focal length guidelines. And with a heavy lens, you may still need to go faster.]
But the other side is what you're trying to capture. If you're after fast moving birds, you still typically need to get that shutter speed up to around 1/500 or faster, regardless of your focal length to prevent motion blur in the subject, and for birds in flight or moving subjects, start thinking faster than 1/1000.
Now, there are different ways of achieving the similar ends in terms of shutter speed. Perhaps the simplest, if you're not used to making quick adjustments would be to use shutter priority and set your desired shutter speed and let the camera adjust aperture and ISO.
I prefer working in Aperture priority, and setting my own ISO to get a workable shutter speed. I'll start out stopped down a stop, and say ISO 400 (my default ISO on the 7D). If the shutter speed is not fast enough, I can open up the lens or bump the ISO, but I have control over how far either one goes, so I can keep them in acceptable limits (e.g., I try not to go above ISO 640). If the lens is wide open and I'm at 640, and I don't have enough shutter speed, I can choose to bump the ISO, or stick with what I've got and hope a slower speed works out (sometimes it will, sometimes it won't). At this point I should be spending more time in full manual mode. There are plenty of times (fast action, changing light, etc) when automatic modes like shutter or aperture priority are really helpful. But if you have the time, the more control you take over the variables, the more you will learn and eventually the better your results will be.
Posted by Brad Hill on January 27, 2011 at 3:33 PM
Hi Paul,
Just a few more thoughts:
1. It's good to remember that the "rule of thumb" of using 1/focal as a shutter speed to ensure sharp shots when hand-holding a lens is just that - a rule of thumb. I know MANY shooters that can get tack sharp shots at much slower shutter speeds AND I know a number of shooters that have to go HIGHER than this to get sharp shots. 1/focal length a good start point (with non-stabilized lenses) but review your own results to see what works for you.
2. IS and VR lenses DO change this rule of thumb significantly. My experience on this differs from Brian's - I regularly hold my 400mm f2.8 and 600mm f4 VR lenses at shutter speeds in the 1/125s to 1/160s range and get sharp shots. Of course, I prefer to avoid this and, even for my arm's sake, I'd prefer to have these big lenses supported on a tripod, but in the areas I commonly work (e.g., shooting from inflatable zodiac boats), using tripods isn't practical.
3. You ask: "So is it safe to assume that when you are using your telephoto lens you should be in Shutter priority unless you specific goal is D.O.F control?".
No. My cameras don't know what shutter priority is (they've never been set on that shooting mode). I "live" in aperture priority mode and if I'm hand-holding big lenses I simply ensure that I choose an aperture that gives me the shutter speed I need. If you're a Nikon shooter (and while in aperture priority mode) you can also specify the "slowest" shutter speed acceptable to you in the Auto ISO function. The only catch with using this is you have to know the maximum ISO that you can take your camera to and still get results that please you.
Just one note - several people suggested working in aperture priority rather than shutter, but didn't really say why. Well, keeping control of ISO is one mentioned reason. But there's another to think about.
But even if you use a fixed ISO, I'd still work in aperture priority mode. Changing shutter speeds will change sharpness and movement, but you're still trying to capture the same image. So once it's fast enough, going faster doesn't really change the image. But closing down the aperture (going to higher f numbers) is going to increase your depth of field - so it's not only going to keep your shutter speed up, but it's going to change the image in, I think, a more fundamental way. \
If you know what range the aperture is likely to fall in in shutter priority mode, or if you don't care about DOF in the image, shutter priority is great. But I think most people prefer to work in aperture priority to have some DOF control.
Discussion
6 repliesWith the advent of modern anti-shake systems - Canon's IS and Nikon's VR - you can hand hold at slower shutter speeds - according the the manufacturers, two, three, or even four stops slower. So if you are hand-holding a non-IS 300mm lens you would want to shoot at 1/300 or faster. (actually it would be probably be 1/250 or faster). With an IS or VR lens you're supposed to be able to hand-hold at 1/60 or even 1/30.
This will help minimize blurring due to camera shake, but if your subject is moving it won't help. For a bird in flight, for example, you probably want to shoot at least at 1/1000, probably faster depending on the bird, regardless of whether you are hand-holding or shooting from a tripod.
First, the minimum shutter speed you need depends a lot on how you're using the lens and what you're trying to capture. For example, if you're handholding, you should go for at least 1/focal length (1/500 for a 500mm), maybe even 1/focal length*2 (1/1000 for a 500mm). If you're using a monopod, you can get slower. I found, with practice, if I was sitting and carefully braced, I could get sharp shots at 1/160 with a monopod and a 700mm focal length. And if the big lens is locked down on a quality tripod, there's almost no limit--I've gotten razor sharp images at 1/2 second with mirror lockup and a tripod with 700mm.
[EDIT: I know that with new IS they say you should be able to handhold at much slower speeds, but I've generally found in my experience that for tack sharp, detailed photos, it's better to stick to those faster 1/focal length guidelines. And with a heavy lens, you may still need to go faster.]
But the other side is what you're trying to capture. If you're after fast moving birds, you still typically need to get that shutter speed up to around 1/500 or faster, regardless of your focal length to prevent motion blur in the subject, and for birds in flight or moving subjects, start thinking faster than 1/1000.
Now, there are different ways of achieving the similar ends in terms of shutter speed. Perhaps the simplest, if you're not used to making quick adjustments would be to use shutter priority and set your desired shutter speed and let the camera adjust aperture and ISO.
I prefer working in Aperture priority, and setting my own ISO to get a workable shutter speed. I'll start out stopped down a stop, and say ISO 400 (my default ISO on the 7D). If the shutter speed is not fast enough, I can open up the lens or bump the ISO, but I have control over how far either one goes, so I can keep them in acceptable limits (e.g., I try not to go above ISO 640). If the lens is wide open and I'm at 640, and I don't have enough shutter speed, I can choose to bump the ISO, or stick with what I've got and hope a slower speed works out (sometimes it will, sometimes it won't). At this point I should be spending more time in full manual mode. There are plenty of times (fast action, changing light, etc) when automatic modes like shutter or aperture priority are really helpful. But if you have the time, the more control you take over the variables, the more you will learn and eventually the better your results will be.
Just a few more thoughts:
1. It's good to remember that the "rule of thumb" of using 1/focal as a shutter speed to ensure sharp shots when hand-holding a lens is just that - a rule of thumb. I know MANY shooters that can get tack sharp shots at much slower shutter speeds AND I know a number of shooters that have to go HIGHER than this to get sharp shots. 1/focal length a good start point (with non-stabilized lenses) but review your own results to see what works for you.
2. IS and VR lenses DO change this rule of thumb significantly. My experience on this differs from Brian's - I regularly hold my 400mm f2.8 and 600mm f4 VR lenses at shutter speeds in the 1/125s to 1/160s range and get sharp shots. Of course, I prefer to avoid this and, even for my arm's sake, I'd prefer to have these big lenses supported on a tripod, but in the areas I commonly work (e.g., shooting from inflatable zodiac boats), using tripods isn't practical.
3. You ask: "So is it safe to assume that when you are using your telephoto lens you should be in Shutter priority unless you specific goal is D.O.F control?".
No. My cameras don't know what shutter priority is (they've never been set on that shooting mode). I "live" in aperture priority mode and if I'm hand-holding big lenses I simply ensure that I choose an aperture that gives me the shutter speed I need. If you're a Nikon shooter (and while in aperture priority mode) you can also specify the "slowest" shutter speed acceptable to you in the Auto ISO function. The only catch with using this is you have to know the maximum ISO that you can take your camera to and still get results that please you.
Cheers...
Brad
But even if you use a fixed ISO, I'd still work in aperture priority mode. Changing shutter speeds will change sharpness and movement, but you're still trying to capture the same image. So once it's fast enough, going faster doesn't really change the image. But closing down the aperture (going to higher f numbers) is going to increase your depth of field - so it's not only going to keep your shutter speed up, but it's going to change the image in, I think, a more fundamental way. \
If you know what range the aperture is likely to fall in in shutter priority mode, or if you don't care about DOF in the image, shutter priority is great. But I think most people prefer to work in aperture priority to have some DOF control.