Avoiding motion blur

For the experienced one's:
How much shutter speed is good enough to prevent pic from blurring due to hand shake (on a camera/lens without image stablization)?

Does this vary with telephoto & wide end ?

Thanks

For subjects that are generally not moving, 1/60 is what most people say you can do. But the general rule is 1 over the focal length. Meaning if you have a 100mm lens, min shutter speed you want is 1/100 handheld, and so on. This doesnt always work when you got low-light situations. Also with moving subjects, if you had a 50mm lens, 1/50 will keep blur from happening due to camera shake, but most subjects move faster than 1/50 of a second.

So in a way

Stationary = 1/60 min
Mild movement = 1/125
more rapid = 1/250
sports (generally good to have) = 1/500

In the end it really does vary.

With your G3 you might be able to get away with 1/60 - 1/125 most of the time.

As Karl suggested, there is no easy answer.

You have to separate out two different things, camera shake and subject motion blur.

Camera shake can be mitigated by using an IS lens, up to a point.

However, IS won't help you for subject motion blur. You have about two ways to try to capture the shot. You can hold the camera firm and try to hit the shutter button at the precise microsecond that the subject is in the frame. That's tough to do. Or, you can try to pan with the subject. You can mostly freeze the subject motion after some practice. That gives the effect of the subject frozen, but with the stationary background blurred. Learning to pan evenly is the trick.

If the subject is close enough, you can do it with flash. Flash is generally much faster than the shutter speed, at least in a normal flash mode. The flash pop will appear to freeze the subject motion for its duration. The ambient light will also fill during the rest of the shutter, but it probably won't amount to much if you do it right.

---Bob Gross---

Thanks Robert & Karl,

My problem is mostly
1. with stationary subjects, for example shooting macro's with closed in f stop for higf DOF & unfortunate enough not to have tripod at that moment, cant use flash at such close range. I boost the iso to prevent shake, however just want to incraese unnecessarily too high ...
2. Moving/stationary ojbects while shooting towards telephoto.
Most of the times I mess up due to hand shake ....

I will try to experiment with the settings mentioned above to get a feel ..

Cheers

Lighting and shallow DOF is always an issue with macro photography, Depend on what macro lens you have, I have a sigma 105mm macro, more working range, furthermore, I use a full manual Vivitar 283 flash with off-shoe cable to position it where I need.

The rule of "one divided by focal length" applies to 35mm cameras. There, a 50mm "normal" field of view lens should do well enough at 1/50 or 1/60, if you use good technique: make body tripod (one foot forward, second foot a bit behind at an angle), left hand under the camera body, right hand on shutter button, both elbows resting on your body, take a breath and naturally exhale it out, pausing for just a second while you squeeze the shutter at the bottom of the breath. With technique like that you should be able to get a high percentage of shots at 1/30. But raising the shutter speed should make most shots crisper anyway, i.e. try not to go below 1/125 unless needed and always squeeze the shutter gently while maintaining the proper posture.

For a G3, I don't know what the diagonal area of the sensor is, so you would have to figure that out and compare it to about 43mm diagonal for 35mm film (hence the 50mm is "normal"). Or if your manual indicates which focal length of the lens zoom range is "normal", then use 1/30 as your limit for that and adjust for wider angle (slower speed ok) and tele (higher speed needed).

The best thing you could do is take some practice shots. Digital cameras don't consume film, so you can take multitudes of tests. Experienced photojournalists were able to train themselves to get a high percentage of shots at 1/15 (35 mm film).

Many problems of photographic technique can be greatly improved by making 100,000 pictures that you think about as you take them and think about as you review them afterwards.

Keep shooting! Digital "film" is cheap!

I guess my question is round about this topic as well. Had a powershot s1 IS that I got a lot of enjoyment out of, but apparently someone else thought they'd enjoy it more than I would, and decided to abscond with it, much to my chagrin. Anyway, I was heartbroken for a while, but the wounds were soon healed by a nice Christmas check which was magically turned into a EOS Digital Rebel. I love this thing to death, but after perusing the manual and what not, i'm still at a bit of a loss as to what settings to use in which situations.

The most common situation for me is sports photography. Still in college and play volleyball here, so I really like the ability to set the camera up and give it to someone to use during matches or tournaments, or just to snap shots when the girls are playing. Problem is, i'm getting a ton of motion blur. Arm swings, passes, blocks, everything has some amount of blur to it, which is why I come to you. I read the above and have tried using things like faster shutter speed and what not, but as stated before, completely new to this, wanting to learn. For an average gym, lighting is usually low to medium, so what shutter speed, f stop, ISO setting, etc. should I set the camera up? Is there a guide that would be an easy reference for future use?

Well sports , I would keep least 1/125 to 1/500 around that range, depending on the lens you are using. If you are using the kit lens, then 1/125 will keep from the camera shake, but you may have to go upto 1/500 depending on how fast the action is, do not be afraid to use ISO 800 or 1600, sometimes you have to use it.

One way to do sports (this is just one way of many). If you dont already have one, get telephoto lens that can do f/2.8 on the aperture. Set the camera in Av mode, set it to 2.8, keep in mind this will make the DOF a bit shallow so making sure focus is good is important as you will only have maybe 3 foot of working range when shooting a subject far off. Before the game starts, or during pratice, with the camera set in Av. Start at ISO 100, half click the shutter when pointing to the feild of play or praticing people, read your shutter, keep increasing the ISO speed until the shutter is at least 1 / focal length of lens, (in this case if you got a 300mm lens, you'll want like 1/250 to 1/300 or faster than that). If you are lucky the lighting can be bright enough to shoot at 1/500 @ f/2.8. But sports, and such unless yer out in a bright sunny day, or in a superbowel type arena, the lighting is never going to be perfect. You could also try say the Canon 50mm f/1.8 for cheap, but if you are shooting sports yer going to probally want a telephoto lens ( 300mm or longer ) , that is f/2.8 or faster. I wouldnt bother too much with the f/4 - f/5.6 telephoto lens as unless yer out in the daylight you'll have the same lighting problems.

Thanks for the info, i'll give it a shot tonight at practice. I am using the kit lens for now, but am looking into purchasing a telephoto lens, maybe even that 1.8f lens you spoke of since generally we're fairly close to the action (on the bench, standing on the sidelines or 20feet away in the seats). Is there a recommendation on telephotos floating around?

edit: wow, where do you find a decent f/2.8 lens that doesn't cost more than my camera did originally? Most of the mid-range priced ones I see are like f/4 or so..

That is true, even the sigmas are up to 1,000$ when looking a telephoto in that aperture range, but I said that as an ideal lens, didnt expect it to be purchasible. Right now the only lens I have for reach that would even meet that requirement would be my Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro , which I would have to manual focus all the time, and anything much further than say 15 foot, gona be focused on infinity anyways. But if the reach of your 18-55 , is good enough on the telephoto end for you, then by all means get the 50mm f/1.8 , for less than 100$. For most people 50mm (80 equiv) isnt far enough of a reach for them in sports. Also a prime lens generally gona be better than a zoom lens.

Is sigma going to be a decent brand? or stick to canon stuff? When I was shopping around for my camera, I noticed lots of packages that included sigma gear. I held off on getting a big package because I wasn't sure of the quality and so forth... Didn't know if it was a case of a lens is a lens is a lens or not..

Note that with "motion blur", people generally mean the movement of the subject, not the movement of the camera due to the shaking of your hands - some people read your question as being about freezing subject motion (Karl, kb244), others read it as being about camera shake blur (Monito).

For stopping motion of a moving subject, you need really fast shutter speeds. It depends on how close the moving subject is and how fast it moves, but you'd probably need speeds of at least 1/250 or faster.

To counter hand shake, there's the famous "one divided by focal length" rule of thumb as mentioned above. When your lens has IS (Image Stabilizer) you can use considerably slower shutter speeds than that without getting much blur in the photo. IS does not help to freeze motion of a moving subject.

It depends, I mean I'd love to stick with the canon brand if I can afford it. But Sigma is usally my second choice brand when I want/need a lens. But the thing about using a diff brand than Canon, is that some are cheap ( like the ones advertized in a package ), and some are damn decent lens. I love my Sigma 105, I wouldnt mind having the Canon 100 Macro, but didnt want to nor could I afford the extra 200-300 $. Also keep in mind, if you are comparing a Canon 'L' Glass telephoto to a sigma, there really no comparism. Many folks here on the forums, already have the L-addiction.

Remeber you get what you paid for. Was certainly true when I bought the Quantary 70-300 'Hi-Speed' for 180$ , was a peice of sh*t, slow autofocus, images very soft. Quality in general wasnt better than even my 18-55 kit lens, took it back, I ended up getting a Canon 28-135 USM IS from a different retailer, guess I didnt need the zoom range, but I was rather impressed with the 28-135's sharpness, and autofocus speed, made a good every day lens replacement to my 18-55, course that baby cost me close to 500$.

What Jesper said, for example my 28-135 USM IS, I could ideally slow the shutter 'almost' 2 stops slower, and still keep ok from camera shake, but its not gona help subject motion, you could try to pan with your subject, but extremities like arms, legs, etc might get blured as well. Its one of the reasons why I find sports sometimes difficult, you need more light, you can get more light by decreasing the shutter speed, but then your subjects get blured, you can try to get more light by decreasing the aperture, but not all lens can open wide enough, and if you did have a 2.8 theres DOF problems if you dont focus it right. You can incrase your ISO to help, but then you'd get more noise than usual. If it was a still subject wouldnt be as bad a problem, but moving subject changes the playing field.

I think the 85mm f1.8 I found (on ebay..) for $320 might be a nice route to go. little better than the 18-55mm that it came with, and will get a little closer to the action. Might pick up a 70-300mm sigma lens for outdoor events (cubs games!) but i think the 85mm one will get close enough to any action indoors and still give a good f-stop without breaking the bank. Now all I need is a camera bag and i'll have a nice little setup.