Showing posts with label speed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label speed. Show all posts

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Safe handheld shutter speeds

Photographers usually talk about safe and unsafe shutter speeds - those where camera shake is unlikel and those where its likely. The safe shutter speed is the reciprocal of the lens equivalent focal lenght. For example: when shooting at an equiv of 30mm , we should consisder using 1/30 sec as the minimum safe shutter speed. Simple but it's also misleading. Camera shake doesnt just switch on or off at specific shutter speeds. It is always there , but at higher shutter speeds the camera movement doesnt have time to blur the photo significantly. The other factor is luck :). So safe shutter speeds are an estimate , not an exact hard number