Shaky Camera Syndrome

One of the biggest problems with buying an expensive modern technologically amazing digital camera is the automation. Automation in the hands of a new photographer can easily work against getting a good image as easily as it should work in getting the image right in the camera.

What I see often on FaceBook are new photographers with top-of-the-line equipment complaining that their images are blurry.

When I say blurry I don’t mean out of focus. Often the camera has focused just fine thank you but the focus point isn’t where the new photographer expected it to be. Birds in a thicket is a typical where the automatic focus stops at the first twig in the foreground and ignores the bird much further in the bush.

Also when I say blurry I don’t mean a shot where the action is blurry but the static background is sharp. This is causes by shooting at too low a shutter speed to stop the passing action. Happens a lot in sports photography or bird photography where the main subject is moving faster than the photographer set the camera’s shutter speed. Often the exposure needs an increase in ISO to result in a proper exposure. The issue with raising the ISO is that also raises the sensor noise (we called this grain – which is not quite the same thing – in our old film cameras) but again modern noise reduction software can save really noisy images shot at astoundingly high ISO numbers.

No overall blurry images are caused by the photographer setting too slow a shutter speed to overcome the actual natural shaking of their hands. As I’ve said in previous posts this happens with a normal lens like a 50mm (35mm equivalent for less than full-frame cameras) at speeds slower than 1/30th of a second.

The longer the lens the higher the shutter speed should be set so a 500mm lens should see the shutter speed set to at least 1/500 of a second or faster. Remember we are talking about stopping the action of the moving subject which might be much faster as when capturing an image of a fast moving bird or animal.

Shooting with very long telephoto lenses which magnify any inherent movement can be a challenge. Lenses of 1000m or longer can reveal the photographer’s heart beat as when hand held the camera and lens is actually moving in time with the shooter’s pulse rate. That’s why snipers and photographers with long telephoto lenses try to hold their breath at the moment of shooting.

There are ways to over come camera shake. The first of course is to use a tripod. Now you can use shutter speeds as low as a good exposure will allow but it won’t stop action. This fact comes into play when shooting moving water like water flowing in a river or over a waterfall. A shutter speed of one to four seconds can smooth out the appearance of the moving water. To do this on a sunny day often involves the use of neutral density filters which screw onto the front of the lens and dramatically reduce the amount of light falling on the sensor. These filters come in a range of darkening effect and can be quite costly for ones with superior glass.

One of the bright shiny new features in top-of-the-line cameras is “in camera stabilization”. This magic technology allows photographers to handhold their cameras at lower shutter speeds than was possible even a few years ago. The best of in camera stabilization can allow shooting hand held not at 1/30th of a second but as low as 1/2 a second and in steady hands even lower.

Again I have to thank the new photographers who post their problems on FaceBook and then suffer through a barrage of wrong suggestions to fix simple issues.