Is it possible that the shutter itself make my long exposure photos blurry?

efef21 · Oct 6, 2017

Hi,

I'm trying to take some long exposure (30s) city photos at night, using a timer on a tripod so there is no reason for the photos to come out blurry...but they do.

My shutter sound have always been somewhat loud (comparing to my older camera), is it possible the the shutter itself makes the camera shake while closing, and by that making my photos blurry?

Camera is Samsung NX3300, I also had the NX3000 which had the same loud shutter sound, so i believe it's not an issue , but rather just how the camera is.

Thanks

Tom Axford · Oct 6, 2017

efef21 said:
Hi,

I'm trying to take some long exposure (30s) city photos at night, using a timer on a tripod so there is no reason for the photos to come out blurry...but they do.

My shutter sound have always been somewhat loud (comparing to my older camera), is it possible the the shutter itself makes the camera shake while closing, and by that making my photos blurry?

Even if the shutter causes camera shake, it is unlikely to last more than a second, so it should not be noticeable in a 30 second exposure, except perhaps for very bright lights (but lens flare generally blurs them a little anyway).

The most likely culprit is the tripod. Unless you have a very sturdy tripod, even a slight breeze can cause enough camera movement to blur your pictures, especially with telephoto lenses.

efef21 · Oct 6, 2017

Tom Axford said:
efef21 said:

Hi,

I'm trying to take some long exposure (30s) city photos at night, using a timer on a tripod so there is no reason for the photos to come out blurry...but they do.

My shutter sound have always been somewhat loud (comparing to my older camera), is it possible the the shutter itself makes the camera shake while closing, and by that making my photos blurry?

Click to expand...

Even if the shutter causes camera shake, it is unlikely to last more than a second, so it should not be noticeable in a 30 second exposure, except perhaps for very bright lights (but lens flare generally blurs them a little anyway).

The most likely culprit is the tripod. Unless you have a very sturdy tripod, even a slight breeze can cause enough camera movement to blur your pictures, especially with telephoto lenses.

Thank you,

For the record I am using 30mm/f2 lens, with a cheapo tripod, but, there are times i put the camera on a flat surface (floor)m which should be the most stable, but still getting some blur.

NikonNature · Oct 6, 2017

No that would be highly unlikely since for a 30 second exposure 29.9 seconds would be rock solid, then the shutter 'slap' for less than a 10th of second at the end.

What is more likely is image stabilization being left on as this will make tiny adjustments even when there is no movement. When using a tripod turn stabilization off. Another possibility is a shaky tripod or wind.

CQui · Oct 6, 2017

There is Blurry and Blurry, it can comes from camera shake or others causes, do you have samples to show?

efef21 · Oct 6, 2017

CQui said:
There is Blurry and Blurry, it can comes from camera shake or others causes, do you have samples to show?

Tom_N · Oct 6, 2017

efef21 said:
I'll post photos once i get home.

To shortly describe it, the overall sharpness of the scene is quite low, and start in the sky looks like vertical white lines rather than white dots.

Vertical white lines suggest directed movement more than undirected shake.

Are you sure that your tripod is holding your camera steady – and not allowing the weight of the lens to slowly pivot the camera so the lens faces more towards the ground? Even if the tripod's legs are sturdy, the tilt lock might not be of the same quality.

Mark S Abeln · Oct 6, 2017

I agree with the others that this might be a tripod problem. Going through a series of cheap tripods is a photographer's rite of passage

efef21 · Oct 6, 2017

CQui said:
There is Blurry and Blurry, it can comes from camera shake or others causes, do you have samples to show?

--
CQui

Tom Axford · Oct 6, 2017

That's not camera blur! It is star trails. Stars move in the sky so any time exposure greater than a few seconds shows star trails. Notice that there is no blur on the building.

efef21 · Oct 6, 2017

Tom Axford said:
That's not camera blur! It is star trails. Stars move in the sky so any time exposure greater than a few seconds shows star trails. Notice that there is no blur on the building.

So how can photos like that be taken without prolonged exposure time?

If you can already see star trails with only 30s of exposure, i'm puzzled haha

BTW the building looks quite blurry to me, don't you think? It doesn't look as sharp as I expected it to look

Mark S Abeln · Oct 6, 2017

Some of those star images are taken with quality ultrawide lenses, shot wide open, at high ISO. So that reduces the needed shutter speed.

Did you add sharpening to your image? I'd try boosting it significantly.

Tom Axford · Oct 6, 2017

efef21 said:
Tom Axford said:

That's not camera blur! It is star trails. Stars move in the sky so any time exposure greater than a few seconds shows star trails. Notice that there is no blur on the building.

Click to expand...

So how can photos like that be taken without prolonged exposure time?

If you can already see star trails with only 30s of exposure, i'm puzzled haha

BTW the building looks quite blurry to me, don't you think? It doesn't look as sharp as I expected it to look

Pictures like that are composites put together in Photoshop. The shot of the milky way was probably taken by mounting the camera on a motorised mount that is set up to follow the rotation of the earth so that the stars appear not to move. Such tracking mounts are very widely used by astronomers for both telescopes and cameras.

The trees on the skyline will have been added in post-processing.

dsjtecserv · Oct 6, 2017

efef21 said:
Tom Axford said:

That's not camera blur! It is star trails. Stars move in the sky so any time exposure greater than a few seconds shows star trails. Notice that there is no blur on the building.

Click to expand...

So how can photos like that be taken without prolonged exposure time?

If you can already see star trails with only 30s of exposure, i'm puzzled haha

BTW the building looks quite blurry to me, don't you think? It doesn't look as sharp as I expected it to look

The rule of the thumb for the maximum exposure time without noticeable start trails is to divide 500 by the effective focal length of the lens. So in your example of a 30 mm focal length on a 1.5 crop, the maximum exposure time would be about 500 / (30 x 1.5) = 500 / 45 = ~11 seconds. If you can tolerate a little bit of trailing, a 600 rule could be used, but that would still limit you to about 14 seconds.

Milky Way and other pictures such as the above where it is desired that the stars be points are often taken with very short focal lengths on full frame cameras, which permit longer exposures before trailing is visible. For instance, with a 14 mm lens, an exposure of about 35 seconds could be tolerated.

With your current set up you can, of course, increase the ISO in order to reduce the exposure time. Your example shot was at ISO 100, so you could have shot at ISO 400 to get the same relative brightness with about 8 seconds of exposure.

Like other folks have mentioned, I don't see the building as particularly blurry.

Dave

--

Galleries by David S. Johnston

www.pbase.com

dsjtecserv · Oct 6, 2017

Tom Axford said:
efef21 said:

Tom Axford said:

That's not camera blur! It is star trails. Stars move in the sky so any time exposure greater than a few seconds shows star trails. Notice that there is no blur on the building.

Click to expand...

So how can photos like that be taken without prolonged exposure time?

If you can already see star trails with only 30s of exposure, i'm puzzled haha

BTW the building looks quite blurry to me, don't you think? It doesn't look as sharp as I expected it to look

Click to expand...

Pictures like that are composites put together in Photoshop. The shot of the milky way was probably taken by mounting the camera on a motorised mount that is set up to follow the rotation of the earth so that the stars appear not to move. Such tracking mounts are very widely used by astronomers for both telescopes and cameras.

The trees on the skyline will have been added in post-processing.

Tom is probably right that the above picture was likely taken with a tracking mount to allow for a long enough exposure to record very faint stars and colors. However, useful non-trailed Milky Way and other astro shots can be taken without a tracking mount, adhering to the 500/EFL rule.

Dave

--

Galleries by David S. Johnston

www.pbase.com

Tom Axford · Oct 6, 2017

Here is a picture of the milky way taken by a professional astronomer. Because he was using a tracking mount and 5 minute exposure, everything on the ground is blurred, but not the stars.

efef21 · Oct 6, 2017

Tom Axford said:
Here is a picture of the milky way taken by a professional astronomer. Because he was using a tracking mount and 5 minute exposure, everything on the ground is blurred, but not the stars.

Is it blurred due to the large aperture (DOF)?

John Sheehy · Oct 6, 2017

Mark Scott Abeln said:
Some of those star images are taken with quality ultrawide lenses, shot wide open, at high ISO. So that reduces the needed shutter speed.

Did you add sharpening to your image? I'd try boosting it significantly.

The image is already so sharp that the star streaks are sometimes only one pixel wide and aliased.

John Sheehy · Oct 6, 2017

efef21 said:
Is it blurred due to the large aperture (DOF)?

What do you mean by "large aperture"? A smaller aperture gives more DOF; not a larger one. A large aperture gives the opportunity with a good lens design to have minimal diffraction, but it can also result in more aberration with more ways for light to wind up in the wrong place with poor design. It's easy to make a large aperture; making a large aperture that still gives so little blur that diffraction is the biggest part of it is the real challenge. Otherwise, any Dollar-store big magnifying glass could be a large-aperture 200 to 300 mm lens

Are you one of those people who substitute "DOF" for "shallow DOF"? Depth and shallowness are opposites; not synonyms. There seems to a bad trend of people calling shallow DOF "DOF". How about "SOF" (shallowness of field)?

efef21 · Oct 6, 2017

John Sheehy said:
efef21 said:

Is it blurred due to the large aperture (DOF)?

Click to expand...

What do you mean by "large aperture"? A smaller aperture gives more DOF; not a larger one. A large aperture gives the opportunity with a good lens design to have minimal diffraction, but it can also result in more aberration with more ways for light to wind up in the wrong place with poor design. It's easy to make a large aperture; making a large aperture that still gives so little blur that diffraction is the biggest part of it is the real challenge. Otherwise, any Dollar-store big magnifying glass could be a large-aperture 200 to 300 mm lens

Are you one of those people who substitute "DOF" for "shallow DOF"? Depth and shallowness are opposites; not synonyms. There seems to a bad trend of people calling shallow DOF "DOF". How about "SOF" (shallowness of field)?

Is it possible that the shutter itself make my long exposure photos blurry?

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