Safe shutter speeds for hand-holding

[Asha]

Unfortuanatly modern digital cameras have done no favours to the average person who wishes to shoot decent photos, as often outside of auto mode, they have little idea of the concepts of photography.
This is not a critiscsm, simply a fact.
I have managed to "teach" several people the basic concepts of photography using simple box brownie cameras....no crop factor, only 2 or 3 aperture settings and often one shutter speed and one focal length!
All these people have naturally learnt at differing speeds but they all agreed that the time taken to learn on a much simpler camera helped them to understand their dream DSLR.

 

[Oggy]

Yes, I agree. Perhaps you can explain the science behind the rule to explain why it's exactly 1/FL for full frame and not 1.2/FL or 0.8/FL?

Oh, there is no science behind it. And it's not exactly 1/FL. It's just a very rough approximation. :bonk:

It is not a rule, it is an aproximation, and no - I cannot explain it. I would guess it is derived from an average person's ability to hold a camera steady, but to leave a factor of up to 1.6 out of the estimation is rissable.

Furthermore it is erring on the dangerous side.

An analogy would be to tell someone that their car can stop in 10m when it will actually take 16. If you were trying to keep things simple, would it not be better to sake it takes 20m?

 

[Roy C]

I have been messing around with Auto ISO on the 7D lately and it is interesting to note that if you are using Av mode the Camera always returns a shutter speed of around 1/FL x 1.6. With my 300/2.8 and 1.4 tc (420mm) it always returns 1/640 sec or 1/800 sec shutter speeds. I have noticed similar results with all my other lenses. So it seems as if Canon have built-in the crop element.
Not that I am saying this is what you should be using as a shutter speed as everyone's hand holding abilities can vary and of course I.S. must come into it.