Shooting with a long lens is blurry

rgrebby

rgrebby

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Richard
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I havnt used a long lens much but I went out today, weather isnt much good, its cloudy and not too bright but still daylight.

I dont have a tripod so im using it hand held which might be the problem but if I use the lens with a shutter speed of around 1/60 the subject is very blurry even if moving slowly.
I have to up the shutter to around 1/250 to get a reasonbly sharp image.

Still its not perfect.

I have a sigma 70-300 4-5.6 APO DG and I guess im just a little clueless.
 
It really is just your shutter speeds to slow for hand holding, simple as that - plus that lens [I have one] is prone to some softness at the longer end especially in less than bright daylight. try upping your ISO settings so you can go for a faster shutter speed, even if that increases noise levels somewhat.
 
I see, if I want to do some good shots I would think the really high ISO's are too high right, what should the max be, something like 400 or could I go to 800/1600?
 
You want a shutter speed equivalent to the focal length.
ie, a focal length of 70mm requires at least 1/70
a focal length of 600mm needs 1/600 of a second.

This is just an estimate rather than set in stone.

rgrebby said:
I see, if I want to do some good shots I would think the really high ISO's are too high right, what should the max be, something like 400 or could I go to 800/1600?
Click to expand...

You can go right up to 1600, just bearing in mind that the picture will be quite noisy.
 
Very rough rule of thumb is that you need to use a shutter speed that is 1 / focal length.

ie.

300mm , shutter speed = 1/300s
70mm , shutter speed = 1/70s

//edit//

I type to slow :D
 
Exactly what you should expect. Using the rule of thumb that the shutter speed should match the focal length of the lens then at the 300mm end of your zoom the minimum safe hand holding speed is 1/300th. This assumes that you have a solid hand holding technique and really is a minimum - you should go quicker with the shutter speed if you can.

With lots of practice and good technique you can sometimes go a little slower than the rule dictates when really necessary but it's always a bit of a gamble. :)
 
Try setting camera to auto ISO, then using shutter priority [or your makes equivalent] and setting shutter speed to 1/300 ish, ie, using foodpoisons speed guide. Then see what ISO and aperture the camera chooses for you. From there you can start making adjustments.

One tip, I have just discovered that keeping th elens pulled in to 200mm makes a dramatic improvement in sharpness, and it works with both my sigma and a nikon equivalent I have.
 
With my 20D and 1D I use 800 ISO nearly all the time at this time of year and it's very acceptable.
 
you should be able to capture reasonable images right up to ISO1600 on the 400D

As the others have said, don't have a shutter speed less than the length of your lens....I always try and have a bit of a safety zone too and go a bit faster eg.....200mm i go for 1/250th
 
Ahh thanks to all the input, I have a canon 400d so not totally sure how to set the ISO to auto and still use the manual shooting modes.
 
Changing the ISO on the 400 involves a few presses of the control keys on the back of the camera.

press the ^ key on the back and then select the iso you require using the direction keys, then you can either half press the shutter button or the set key to select the highlighted choice.

iirc the iso is kept between 100 and 400 in the basic modes.
 
Ah yah I got the setting of the iso without any problem, i'll keep them between those two and see how I get on. Ive been messing around with the different numbers, 1600 seems very bad when its dark though.
Is there any way to set it to auto on the manual settings?
 
I had the same thing with the canon 75-300 4-5.6 last week when I was practicing indoors with low light. I knew I needed a shutter speed minimum of 125 so I took the ISO up to 1600 to see what happened. The shots closer to the 70 end were alot better (still not good enough) than the ones at the 250 end. The 4.5 was flashing in the preview screen which on my camera tells me there is not enough light for that shutter speed.
When I changed to sport setting the camera wanted a shutter speed of 60 for the available light, but that would have resulted in even more blurred pictures!

I have just popped the camera ourside the back door and taken the same handheld picture with 2 lenses, both set at 200 one was the cannon (as above), the other was the sigma 70-200 2.8 both at ISO 1600 and shutter speed 320 as you can see there is a huge difference in the quality of the shot simply because the sigma can cope with the lower light levels all the way along the lens.

Canon Lens
Canon_lens.jpg


Sigma Lens
Sigma_lens.jpg


Both handheld and straight from the camera other than resizing for the forum.
 
rgrebby said:
1600 seems very bad when its dark though.
Is there any way to set it to auto on the manual settings?
Click to expand...

How do you mean bad?.....noisy image?

AFAIK only the 1 series offer auto iso in Canons range.
 
The rule of thumb guide is a very good starting point. but bear in mind your 300mm lens on a canon with 1.6 crop is really a 480mm. A general rule is on a bright sunny day you can expect around 1/500 @ f8 Iso 100. If you are shoting in dull / cloudy conditions you can expect to lose at least 3 stops, if not more. You can only open your lens at 300mm end to f5.6 So to maintain speed you would have to up the Iso to at least 400.
Hope this helps.
PS I the old days when I used to shoot Kodachrome 64 Slide film I never even got my camera out of the bag unless it was sunny. How technology has move on.:)
 
iso 1600 can still produce nice shots on the 400d, lots better than nothing!

yes you'll get a bit of noise, but still better than the grain on 400 film I reckon.

a monopod will help, and a tripod produces miracles
 
I recently purchased the sigma 70-300 4-5.6 APO DG lens. Over the past week I have been in the garden taking shots of wildlife but have been slightly disappointed by the results, lack of sharpeness. Having read this thread I now have better understanding of what I have been doing wrong.

So, thanks everyone who contributed with advice. Back out in the garden tomorrow to test out the theory.

P.S. if no improvement does that mean your all talking rubbish?
 
TerryH said:
P.S. if no improvement does that mean your all talking rubbish?
Click to expand...
No. But there are a couple of important facts to bear in mind.

1. This reciprocal-of-the-focal-length rule of thumb is exactly that - it's a rule of thumb. It assumes that you know how to hold a camera properly, that you have reasonably stable hands, that sort of thing. Some people can manage shutter speeds one or two stops slower than the rule of thumb suggests. Some people have to be one or two stops faster. The fact that you're shooting at, say, 1/250th with a 200mm lens is no guarantee that you've avoided camera shake. But if you had a shutter speed of say 1/4000th then camera shake is almost certainly not going to be an issue.

2. Image softness can be caused by many things. Camera shake is one. Inaccurate focussing is another. Subject movement is another. And it's even possible that the lens is faulty.

If you were to post some sample images which have disappointed you, the people here could help diagnose what might be going wrong. But without pictures to look at, it's all guesswork.
 
Holding a camera steady takes a bit of practise. Your stance is important, foot position, arm position. You can use the neck strap as a sling around your upper arm as well. Relaxed breathing, caress shutter button, don't stab at it. If panning, follow through the pan after shutter has been triggered.

Focal length rule of 1/focal length worth remembering. Otherwise you can up the iso a bit to compensate.

Also be down to quality of lenses. Cheap lenses are more likely to be soft than the professional equivalent which is generally 10 times the price.
 
You really, really need a tripod if shooting over 100mm, really.

In fact people like me who can't affort lenses with image stabilising usually shoot with a tripod most of the time, it's a good habit to get into, you'll notice the difference. Really.
 
like said before its a balance between a iso that dont create too much noise for your requirements, a shutter speed that works for you, but i would certainly invest in a tripod and cable release, (ebay nice and cheap) with anything 300mm or above.
 
Retro said:
The rule of thumb guide is a very good starting point. but bear in mind your 300mm lens on a canon with 1.6 crop is really a 480mm.
Click to expand...

A prize for that man! Retro is the only one to correctly point out that any crop factor will affect this general rule of thumb.

Thus for you 300mm on a 1.6x sensor you should be aiming at 1/500 sec. Some can hand hold at much slower speeds than this, some need faster speeds, and you can improve with practice.

Part of post removed
 
sprog said:
Well there's your answer right there Mr Technique.

You shoot your way, I'll stick with a tripod or bean bag thanks.
Click to expand...

Not at all, the aperture of the lens doesn't change the requirement to have a faster shutter speed for longer focal lengths, it just makes it easier to achieve the said shutter speed if that aperture is the required one. If anything, the faster the lens the harder to hand hold as they are generally longer, more substantial and heavy than slower lenses.

You shoot whichever way suits you best, but I'd recommend not telling others that it's the only way.
 
NorthernNikon said:
A prize for that man! Retro is the only one to correctly point out that any crop factor will affect this general rule of thumb.

Thus for you 300mm on a 1.6x sensor you should be aiming at 1/500 sec. Some can hand hold at much slower speeds than this, some need faster speeds, and you can improve with practice.
Click to expand...

Why should it be so? The focal length is not changing at all? The excess light that would fall on a 35mm film is falling not on a sensor, but on the camera housing.

If you could magically press a button to switch off the outer edges of the pixels to convert a FF camera into a x1.6 crop camera, you wouldn't have to raise the shutter speed from 1/300 to 1/500th second.

Or have I got my befuddled Friday afternoon brain in gear?
 
IanC_UK said:
Only the 1D/1DS Mk3 have auto ISO as far as i am aware in the Canon range, think its more common on Nikons.
Click to expand...


you know im sure the 40D has as well...

ill have to check but im sure its come up as AUTO while ive been selecting thru it.:thinking:
 
You should shoot at a shutter speed of 1/focal length, this includes the cropping factor of the camera. So a 300mm lens on a 350d should be shot at 1/480 of a second.
 
Its just a guidline though.. I have shot football at some silly slow speeds (200 on a 300 lens with 1.3 body) under dim floodlights and still walked away with summat.
 
NorthernNikon said:
A prize for that man! Retro is the only one to correctly point out that any crop factor will affect this general rule of thumb.

Thus for you 300mm on a 1.6x sensor you should be aiming at 1/500 sec. Some can hand hold at much slower speeds than this, some need faster speeds, and you can improve with practice.
Click to expand...

The crop factor does not come in to it as the movement of the image on the sensor causes the blur. It does not matter if you keep all or a cropped portion of the projected image the effects of movement are the same
 
The crop factor does not come in to it as the movement of the image on the sensor causes the blur. It does not matter if you keep all or a cropped portion of the projected image the effects of movement are the same
Click to expand...
I think this is wrong and as others have pointed out above the effect of the sensor size crop needs to be taken into consideration as well i think it is explained in detail here


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_factor

and here

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/digital-crop-factor-hand-holding.html

but i think this post from another forum explains it better then i could

taken from
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007YEP
Peter Groen, Feb 29, 2004; 01:39 p.m.

Ofcourse it is YES. Think logically people. The shaking of the camera is of course amplified because of the multiplier factor.
As an example: let's assume you make a picture using a Canon 1Ds and a Canon 10D (1.6 multiplier), both with the same lens:
You shake both camera's 1 mm up and down.
For the 1Ds, this means that the picture is being shaken for 1mm of the 23.8 mm of the sensor's height (sensor is 35.8 x 23.8 mm). That means that the picture is being blurred for 1/23.8th part of it's total height: 4.2%
For the 10D, this means that the picture is being shaken for 1mm of the 15.1 mm of the sensor's height (sensor is 22.7 mm x 15.1 mm). That means that the picture is being blurred for 1/15.1th part of it's total height: 6.6%

Ok, which picture will be 'blurrier'? That of the 10D of course, and exactly 1.6 times blurrier than the picture taken with the 1Ds.

So, yes, you should multiply the 1/focal length rule with the multiplier for digital camera's...
 
sportysnaps said:
I think this is wrong and as others have pointed out above the effect of the sensor size crop needs to be taken into consideration as well i think it is explained in detail here


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_factor

and here

http://www.earthboundlight.com/phototips/digital-crop-factor-hand-holding.html

but i think this post from another forum explains it better then i could

taken from
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=007YEP
Peter Groen, Feb 29, 2004; 01:39 p.m.

Ofcourse it is YES. Think logically people. The shaking of the camera is of course amplified because of the multiplier factor.
As an example: let's assume you make a picture using a Canon 1Ds and a Canon 10D (1.6 multiplier), both with the same lens:
You shake both camera's 1 mm up and down.
For the 1Ds, this means that the picture is being shaken for 1mm of the 23.8 mm of the sensor's height (sensor is 35.8 x 23.8 mm). That means that the picture is being blurred for 1/23.8th part of it's total height: 4.2%
For the 10D, this means that the picture is being shaken for 1mm of the 15.1 mm of the sensor's height (sensor is 22.7 mm x 15.1 mm). That means that the picture is being blurred for 1/15.1th part of it's total height: 6.6%

Ok, which picture will be 'blurrier'? That of the 10D of course, and exactly 1.6 times blurrier than the picture taken with the 1Ds.

So, yes, you should multiply the 1/focal length rule with the multiplier for digital camera's...
Click to expand...


There's some elegant maths going one here, at least I'll assume so, because I can't be bothered to work it out. Photography is not an exact science. much as some people would like it to be.

The fact is that the Rule Of Thumb of the shutter speed corresponding to focal length is a tried and tested formula used by generations of photographers. It's always assumed that that is using a good solid hand holding technique. It's the latter which is probably at fault in most people who consistently experience blurry images, in fact I'm constantly amazed by how many photographers I meet who've never seriously considered how they hold the camera .Image stabilisation throws another spanner in the works of the ROT, but thankfully, it's on the safe side. It's always been advised that the ROT is also a safe minimum speed and you should go faster if you can, while we also know it's true that many experienced users can use a slower shutter speed than the rule dictates. The original question though was from someone seeking basic guidance and I'm not sure this thread is going to be too much help to him by the time he's finished bleeding from the ears. ;)

What's just a little too glib about the above maths is it's assumed that there's blur on the sensor image to start with, and that the ROT didn't do an acceptable job in the first place. Now at this point you can start to consider the Circle Of Confusion, anticipated print size and it's effect on final perceived sharpness if we want to make things really really complicated, but I'll pass on that if you don't mind.

If I was to add a factor of 1.6X in determining a safe hand holding shutter speed, I wouldn't press the shutter at all on a lot of days. It was dull as dishwater here this morning and out of curiosity, I took a meter reading at one of my favourite bird spots and got 1/60th at f2.8 and 800 ISO. Just about do-able with IS and the 70-200mm 2.8. I can and have got sharp shots at that speed. Add in the 1.6X factor and it's Goodnight Vienna!

I think solid basic camera holding technique is a gazillion times more relevant to getting sharp images than worrying about how the 1.6X crop factor affects shutter speed.
 
CT said:
I think solid basic camera holding technique is a gazillion times more relevant to getting sharp images than worrying about how the 1.6X crop factor affects shutter speed.
Click to expand...

Well put CT and I agree it is important to learn basic handling techniques - I know I might have to learn a few more on Monday when my 70-200mm 2.8 IS arrives also make use of bean bags and tripod/monopod too.
 
Using a tripod is probably the best thing you'll ever do for getting sharp images Gilly. By choice I'd use one all the time, and do most of the time unless it's really impractical or I'm just too damned lazy to lug one around :D
 
Fantastic thread, i have just learned so much from this it's untrue. :)
 
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