Are the Japanese getting carried away?

ash59uk

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Chris
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I was browsing a few camera specs the other day and noticed the shutter speeds offered by some of them, 1/4000 sec and 1/8000 sec when would you ever use such speeds?

I took our ships helicopter back in my navy days at 1/1000 that was fast enough to stop the main rotor blades at 1/2000 it stopped the tail rotor too.

I could only imagine using 1/8000 when taking a fighter jet at full speed at low level and boy would you have to be a fast panner :lol:
 
How about in bright light when you want to use a wide aperture for shallow DoF? Just one answer of many.
 
To be fair I have just gotten into taking shots of rugby union and the other day it was really bright and I was shooting some at 1/4000 and it was so bright that I was using about 1/4000, f/11, ISO100 at times just to get the image correctly exposed so if I had been able to I would have considered a faster shutter speed

I am still learning so was probably going wrong somewhere

Matt
MWHCVT

Edit: awp can type faster than me ;)
 
I believe the 1D classic was able to go as fast as 1/16000!
 
What ISO were you shooting at in your Navy days?

When I was shooting film it was often at ISO50 or ISO64, and now my default is ISO800 - that's four stops higher ;)
 
To be fair I have just gotten into taking shots of rugby union and the other day it was really bright and I was shooting some at 1/4000 and it was so bright that I was using about 1/4000, f/11, ISO100 at times just to get the image correctly exposed so if I had been able to I would have considered a faster shutter speed

I am still learning so was probably going wrong somewhere

That's some seriously bright light there, about 20X or 4.3 stops brighter than direct sunlight. What sort of lighting did you have?
 
What ISO were you shooting at in your Navy days?

When I was shooting film it was often at ISO50 or ISO64, and now my default is ISO800 - that's four stops higher ;)

iso100 or 200 mostly it depended where we were sometimes iso400 if we were way up north, it was a case of guessing what the light would be and getting a good all rounder because as you know you can`t change the iso without changing the film.
 
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iso100 or 200 mostly it depended where we were sometimes iso400 if we were way up north, it was a case of guessing what the light would be and getting a good all rounder because as you know you can`t change the iso without changing the film.

Hi Ash,
Nice to know there are a few ex matlots in the area who are also keen phots.

Tug Wilson Ex CPOWEM(R) & Ships Phot lol
 
fabs said:
^^^
This

I once took a photo at f4 on such a bright day I needed 1/8000th!



Yep and even then its still sometimes too bright and you need a nd filter to get correct exposure. It's also useful sometimes combined with high speed sync flash. Also with 1/8000 you can capture things like water splashes without using a dark environment and flash to freeze it.
 
Here's an example: 1/5000s, f/1.8, ISO 100, 85mm

I frequently hit the maximum limit when using large aperture lenses on bright days.

5554109335_c590e77c6b_b_d.jpg


Cheers
 
Don't forget also that the exposure isn't an instantaneous open-shut affair, it's a narrow slit moving across the sensor. So although each part of the sensor may only get an exposure of 1/8000th, the total exposure takes much longer, which may have distortion consequences with fast moving subjects. I imagine that there's probably an irreducible minimum size for the slot width because of diffraction effects, so to get really fast shutter speeds the blinds have to move faster, which will reduce the distortion effects.
 
Hi Ash,
Nice to know there are a few ex matlots in the area who are also keen phots.

Tug Wilson Ex CPOWEM(R) & Ships Phot lol

Hello Tug, I've met some of your blokes on my travels: Stu Antrobus and Paul Cowpe stick in the mind. And a very charming young blonde called Angie, who I met in Beirut - I think she was on HMS Ocean at the time...
We also used some Afghan video footage shot by Paul Punter back in 2006 if I recall correctly.

By the way - you want to shoot helicopters with slower shutter speeds so the rotors blur a bit: 160th will do - if you freeze them, they look like Airfix kits montaged onto the sky. I learnt that from Stu, so don't take my word for it.
 
By the way - you want to shoot helicopters with slower shutter speeds so the rotors blur a bit: 160th will do - if you freeze them, they look like Airfix kits montaged onto the sky. I learnt that from Stu, so don't take my word for it.
I was trying out the camera to see how fast it would need to be to freeze the rotors, it really is weird to see the chopper hovering by the ship with stopped rotors, I have quite a few pics that I took at various shutter speeds.
 
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