what shutter speed do you use in the studio?

I found myself always using 1/250 because i want the sharpest possible picture. Im wondering if using slower speeds might be better for noise. I find my pictures are a bit noisy even i use iso 100.
So what are the advantages and disadvantages ( if any at all) of shutter speed in the studio except for the obvious camera shake and hyper active kids moving around.
Thanks

What kind of lighing are you using? Continuous, I'm presuming.

With today's cameras, you're better off raising the ISO to as much as 800 to get a higher shutter speed. Not even 1/250 is really that fast for critical sharpness. You can remove noise by various methods, but you can't remove motion blur.

As for hyper-active kids, do this:

Get yourself an inexpensive radio remote shutter release. Put the camera on a tripod, focus it on a spot with a moderately long lens, put the kid on the spot and then get out behind the camera and as close to the kid as possible, just out of the camera's field of view.

This is why: Small children depend on seeing your face and expressions for a large proportion of communication. When you're standing two or three meters away with your face behind a camera, you've lost most of your ability to communicate with them. By getting your face from behind the camera and moving closer to them, you will communicate better and be able to "rivet" them more effectively to one spot.

I didn't realize how well this worked until I watched a friend of mine who specializes in commercial photography of children.

I presume you are usingg the strobes in your signature?

In which case, shutter speed isn't likely to have any effect on sharpness (unless you have very strong ambient light). The flash duration is much shorter than the shutter speed and so becomes the effective exposure time.

So long as you are at your synch speed, or a bit slower, you will be fine. If using radio triggers, you are best at a bit slower than synch as the signal can introduce a little delay during which the shutter starts moving.

To answer your question, I normally use 1/160th (my max synch speed is 1/250th) just to allow for any signal delay. That is fine because the flash freezes any motion, even if the model is leaping around.

Edited to add: Just spotted your comment about noise. There is no way the shutter speed will affect noise, if you are seeing too much noise it is more likely due to underexposure then bringing it up in processing. It is very unusual to see noise issues in the studio as low ISO is the norm. Maybe you could post a couple of images to show the problem, that will give us more idea as to possible cause.

sandpiper wrote in post #12012694
I presume you are usingg the strobes in your signature?

Yes i have 2x 500w soft boxes

sandpiper wrote in post #12012694
In which case, shutter speed isn't likely to have any effect on sharpness (unless you have very strong ambient light). The flash duration is much shorter than the shutter speed and so becomes the effective exposure time.

I didnt know that and now thanks to you i do

sandpiper wrote in post #12012694
So long as you are at your synch speed, or a bit slower, you will be fine. If using radio triggers, you are best at a bit slower than synch as the signal can introduce a little delay during which the shutter starts moving.

To answer your question, I normally use 1/160th (my max synch speed is 1/250th) just to allow for any signal delay. That is fine because the flash freezes any motion, even if the model is leaping around.

My strobes are optic slave, should i allow for signal delay?

sandpiper wrote in post #12012694
Edited to add: Just spotted your comment about noise. There is no way the shutter speed will affect noise, if you are seeing too much noise it is more likely due to underexposure then bringing it up in processing. It is very unusual to see noise issues in the studio as low ISO is the norm. Maybe you could post a couple of images to show the problem, that will give us more idea as to possible cause.

I plan to make a new and seperate thread on my noise issues soon. I do always try expose for highlights so that raising exposure in PP is kept minimal. I find that in adobe camera raw when processing my raw files, i can usually be rid of the noise when applying a noise reduction of between 35 - 50% but it then brings softness into the picture.

Thank you for your comments

boerewors wrote in post #12013528
My strobes are optic slave, should i allow for signal delay?

You should be OK, but you will soon know if you need to drop to a slower shutter speed as you will see a dark shadow starting to appear along one edge of your shots.

RDKirk wrote in post #12012625
As for hyper-active kids, do this:

Get yourself an inexpensive radio remote shutter release. Put the camera on a tripod, focus it on a spot with a moderately long lens, put the kid on the spot and then get out behind the camera and as close to the kid as possible, just out of the camera's field of view.

This is why: Small children depend on seeing your face and expressions for a large proportion of communication. When you're standing two or three meters away with your face behind a camera, you've lost most of your ability to communicate with them. By getting your face from behind the camera and moving closer to them, you will communicate better and be able to "rivet" them more effectively to one spot.

I didn't realize how well this worked until I watched a friend of mine who specializes in commercial photography of children.

For now, my wife is the one who sits up close and communicates with the kids which seems to work fine. I dont like the idea of using a tripod and manually focusing on a spot because kids move around too much and i feel that i need to be looking in the view finder to compose. If im not doing that then i find i end up either cropping too much during PP or i cut a shoulder off here and there.

sandpiper wrote in post #12013578
You should be OK, but you will soon know if you need to drop to a slower shutter speed as you will see a dark shadow starting to appear along one edge of your shots.

Interesting comment. I posted a picture a while back for c&c and one of the comments was that i had some light fall off to the right of my image. I guess i will start experimenting with slower shutter speeds. Thank you

boerewors wrote in post #12013636
Interesting comment. I posted a picture a while back for c&c and one of the comments was that i had some light fall off to the right of my image. I guess i will start experimenting with slower shutter speeds. Thank you

Yeah, that sounds like you could be catching the edge of the shutter moving across when the flash fires. Dropping your shutter speed one notch (a third of a stop) should be enough to prevent that. Alternatively, of course, it could have been your lighting set up - hard to say without seeing the image.

It's easy to experiment with and check though, just do a couple of test shots at your normal setting and a slower one.

boerewors wrote in post #12011591
I found myself always using 1/250 because i want the sharpest possible picture. Im wondering if using slower speeds might be better for noise. I find my pictures are a bit noisy even i use iso 100.
So what are the advantages and disadvantages ( if any at all) of shutter speed in the studio except for the obvious camera shake and hyper active kids moving around.
Thanks

ISO100 is noisy? Is it all over the image or just in the shadows? Are you doing heavy cropping and/or exposure tweaking in post? I'd be interested in seeing what the noise looks like.

The shutter speed/ISO I use is fairly dependant on how much ambent light I want to include in the image, the max usable sync speed of my camera/lights and subject/camera movement.

Using a slower shutter speed and higher ISO lets more room light in, usefull when doing environmental photos. I'll normally meter the ambent -1/2-1 stop and set my strobes to make up the rest. Higher ISO lets my flashes not work as hard, usefull when speedlights are used (faster recycle).

While many cameras have a 1/200 or 1/250 sync speed, many studio lights won't sync at that speed. I commonly use 160th with my monolights. If you have a black stripe on the bottom of your image (in landscape mode) you may be exceeding the sync speed of your lights.

My experience with my cats (I don't have kids) is to switch the camera to manual focus and pre focus in a 'target zone' along with using F8 or higher. Then I coax them into the zone and use a wireless remote shutter release.

mbloof wrote in post #12037146
ISO100 is noisy? Is it all over the image or just in the shadows? Are you doing heavy cropping and/or exposure tweaking in post?

I must say i am guilty for some of those errors. I have since been exposing higher and been getting better results in the shadow areas.
What i do now is i expose until i get blinking highlights and then go one stop down on aperture.
I never thought of adjusting to allow ambient light. Not sure if i want to do that because it may introduce movement and hence blur into my pics. I will give it a try though. Thanks for the suggestions. Im next gonna try the manual focus and remote tip. I always used AF when using a remote and got nasty results.

F8 or f11 iso 100 1/125. Those are usually my studio settings.

1/125@f8 ISO 200

Why do you guys choose 1/125? Or do you guys have ambient light in the exposure?

Eruditass wrote in post #12173214
Why do you guys choose 1/125? Or do you guys have ambient light in the exposure?

I'd say they are 5D users

If using strobes I use 1/250s at ISO 100 or 200, and anything up form f4/8

GK

Eruditass wrote in post #12173214
Why do you guys choose 1/125? Or do you guys have ambient light in the exposure?

This from a post above.