Shakey Photos

Are you getting images that look out of focus or just overall soft and not as sharp as you’d like to see? Is this happening when shooting indoors without a flash or when taking shots at night again without a flash?

If so it’s very likely your shutter speed is too slow. This happens all the time to new photographers. It’s especially a problem when using light-weight point-and-shoot cameras as heavier cameras are easier to hold still.

It comes down to this: we all shake and as we get older some of us shake a little more in our old age. And this shake gets transmitted through our hands to the camera. So to overcome this natural shakiness it’s important to always shoot at a shutter speed that’s high enough to overcome this problem or use a tripod which is especially useful for night shots.

The general rule of thumb is always shoot at a shutter speed of at least 1/30th of a second when using a normal or wide lens. When it comes to telephoto lenses the extra magnification also affects the shake so the rule here is to shoot at the same shutter speed as the size of the lens. For example when shooting with a 500mm telephoto lens set your shutter speed to at least 1/500th of a second.

One of the secondary issues you’re going to run into is you may have to open up your lens to allow more light to hit the sensor or turn the sensor sensitivity (ISO) up to compensate for the higher shutter speeds.

As for using a tripod at night while that will allow you to shoot at very slow shutter speeds even going into many seconds or even minutes remember that at these slow shutter speeds you’re going to get blur if anything in your composed image is moving. That includes people, cars, flags and even leaves on trees.