How Slow Can You Hand-Hold Before It Goes Soft
Okay. Last time we talked about freezing motion and blurring it on purpose, which is the fun end of shutter speed. Today's the less fun end. This is the lesson where I tell you that your own two hands are part of the exposure equation whether you like it or not.
Here's the thing. Every camera you'll ever hold shakes a little. Your heartbeat moves it. Your breathing moves it. Standing there thinking about your shot moves it. Doesn't matter how steady you think you are, there's a small amount of motion happening between your hands and the camera at all times, and if your shutter speed is slow enough, that tiny shake shows up in the photo as softness. Not blur like a moving car. Just a picture that looks like it's not quite in focus even when it is. That's called camera shake, and it's different from subject motion, and a lot of new photographers blame their lens or their focus when it's really just their hands.
The old rule, and why it's a starting point and not gospel
There's a rule of thumb that's been around since film cameras, and it goes like this: your shutter speed shouldn't be slower than 1 over your focal length. So if you're shooting at 50mm, don't go slower than 1/50th of a second handheld. If you're zoomed to 200mm, you want at least 1/200th.
The logic is that a longer lens magnifies everything, including your shake, so it needs a faster shutter to compensate. Makes sense.
I'll be honest with you, that rule is a starting point, not a law. It was built around old film cameras and it doesn't account for image stabilization, which a lot of kit lenses have now, or for the fact that some people are just naturally steadier than others. I've got a neighbor who can hand-hold 1/15th and get sharp shots and I can't do that reliably at 1/30th. So use the rule to get in the neighborhood, then go test yourself, because your actual number is going to be a little different from mine and a little different from the guy at the camera store.
How to actually test this at home
You don't need anything fancy for this. Here's what I want you to do.
Find something with fine detail, a newspaper works, or a plant with lots of little leaves, or the bark on a tree in your yard. Set your camera to shutter priority (that's the S or Tv mode, we'll get to full manual soon, I promise). Start at 1/250th and take a shot handheld. Then drop to 1/125th, then 1/60th, then 1/30th, then 1/15th, then 1/8th if you're brave. Same subject, same distance, every time.
Then go inside, pull the pictures up on your computer, zoom in to 100 percent, and actually look. Not on the little LCD screen on the back of the camera, that screen lies to you, everything looks sharp on it. You need the big screen.
Somewhere in that sequence you'll see the shots go from crisp to soft. That point, wherever it happens for you, is your personal hand-holding limit. Write it in your notebook. I've got mine written down and it's roughly 1/60th for a normal lens, slower than that and I start to see it.
What to do once you know your number
Once you know roughly where you go soft, you've got three ways to deal with a shutter speed that's slower than your limit. Raise your ISO, which we haven't covered yet but is coming. Widen your aperture to let more light in, also coming. Or brace yourself, physically, which costs nothing and works today.
Bracing means tucking your elbows into your body instead of holding the camera out away from you, leaning against a wall or a fence post or a tree if one's handy, and breathing out slowly right as you press the shutter instead of holding your breath and tensing up. Sounds small. Makes a real difference.
I'll admit I got stubborn about this for a while. I went through about two years where I only shot in aperture priority and told myself that was basically manual, since I was choosing the aperture and letting the camera pick shutter speed. It wasn't basically manual. I knew it wasn't the whole time, and it nagged at me, because I was still handing off a decision I should've been making myself. Eventually I made myself shoot a whole summer of hikes in full manual, one setting at a time, and figuring out my hand-holding limit was part of what forced that. You can't fake your way past your own shake. The camera doesn't care what mode you're in, it only cares what shutter speed actually got used.
One real caution here: don't chase a fast shutter speed so hard that you crank your ISO into noisy territory just to avoid a soft shot. There's a balance. We'll get into that balance properly once ISO's on the table.
Before next time, run that test. Find your number, write it down, and bring your notebook to the next session. I want to see what everybody's actual limit turned out to be, because I guarantee the room's not going to agree with each other.