The truth about SS & sharp images

Adrian Harris wrote:

Guy Parsons wrote:

Adrian Harris wrote:

They were both very low light dusk/night shoots and accordingly very slow shutter speed.

Are you sure that you are seeing camera induced shock and not user induced shake at those speeds?

Regards..... Guy

Hi Guy, they were remote triggered and on a tripod, oh and stabilisation was switched off.

I realise that user induced shake is far more common than many may realise - and I learned the hard way.

When on a beach at night I try and prevent people walking within 20feet of my tripod.

And once when in a field at night with a 400mm lens I had a 150 shot panorama ruined by a car driving past on a nearby road, possibly around 60 feet away ... Now that I didn't expect!

So it is possible that something else was going on that I was unaware of as I was in a rail yard, and although I took great care to place the tripod on a concrete slab it doesn't necessarily mean that it was 100% safe.

Shutter shock is usually easy to tell from shake.

Shock typically happens in the maybe 1/60 to 1/250 region and creates a distinct double edge effect on any bright edges. On my E-PL5 it seems to be a displacement up and to the right, definitely not purely vertical displacement.

Shock in much longer shutter times only occupies a much smaller proportion of the exposure period and may not have any effect at all.

Shake on the other hand is a smear effect in any direction, so ground wobbles, tripod wobbles, wind wobbles can all do nasties to the image.

Some E-PL5 shock with 75-300mm lens......

E-PL5 100% comparo in FastStone Viewer, sort of OK left - definite shock right.

View at original size to see properly.

Regards.......... Guy

Adrian Harris wrote:

gardenersassistant wrote:

Adrian Harris wrote:

Hi Nick, I am only viewing your flowers via a phone and can't see any issues with your images.

Interesting. Presumably you are seeing the animations, not single images?

Assuming you are seeing the animations, can I probe a little please. Are you not seeing any geometric differences from one frame to another? Or are you seeing differences but don't see them as being problematic?

Hi Nick, no I can't see any animations, I'll look again tomorrow on my PC.

Ah. OK.

I personally think that the Panasonic 14-140 is a wonderful lens and use it extensively on my gx8, gx7 and em1-mk2 without any problems whatsoever. However it is not a lens that would be on my camera when in situations that may require the use of mechanical shutter, as these for me are normally either very long telephoto or very fast aperture situations. So I would be using different lenses.

So you don't think using a mechanical shutter is a good idea with this lens? Even though the new shutter in the G80 appears to have solved the shutter shock issues with the power zoom lenses (like the 45-175 that I have) that are a bit notorious for being susceptible to shutter shock, and seem to solve it even without using EFC, and the more so when using EFC, which I do?

That's not quit what I meant, but others say its prone to suffer shutter shake on a GX8 under certain circumstances.

The reason I haven't been using the 14-140 with mechanical shutter is because it's the wrong lens. The situations where I need mechanical shutter are normally either for propeller aircraft which normally necessitates my 100-400 (great lens for flowers by the way).

Or for roller derby in dim LED lit sports halls where I need a f2.8 lens.

Understood. So presumably apart from these uses you normally use electronic shutter? (That cured SS issues with my G5 and 45-175.)

chriskeats wrote:

interesting original post, and oy! that animation was jarring

Yes, seen animated like that it does look bad to me. That said, for this type of image if just looking at a single image I don't think I could tell. It was only when I was trying to match some images  when comparing the 14-140 against a 45-175 that I realised there was a distortion in one of the images that I couldn't reverse with the usual geometric adjustments. That was a pair of single images from the different lenses and it was difficult to work out what was going on. But it really jumped out in these aperture bracketing burst sequences.

I'm picking up a replacement 14-140 tomorrow, hopefully. I've got a hunch that I may find this is a firmware/hardware combination glitch that I have to simply put up with. That could be bad news for focus bracketing though. And I wonder if it would affect 4K post-focus video, which I use more than focus bracketing to source images for stacking?

cheers

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chriskeats wrote:

I'm ashamed to admit, having my g85 since july or so I have not tried any of the 4k variations (except plain 4k once when I first got it). could be bc 80% (at a guess) of my shooting is with manual glass. but I'm really gonna have to get off the furniture and try them out

It depends on what sort of subjects you deal with of course, but I've been finding three functions on the G80 very useful for (mainly) botanical subjects. These are post focus, which is 4K, focus bracketing and aperture bracketing. I have picked out some examples if you are interested, but I don't know that this is the place to post them - it would be going rather off-topic I think. I'll put them somewhere else if you like, but it's the fact that I use those techniques that gives me concern about the geometry changing at random during a capture sequence.

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I used to shoot film, but I ran out of bullets
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"my days of not taking you seriously are coming to a middle"
"i've been called worse things by better people"

Guy Parsons wrote:

All I can put it down to is spurious OIS/IBIS/Digital corrections happening during a frame for no obvious reason.

I've seen this too. It was merely a curiosity for a while, but came to a pointy head when I found that I couldn't stack eclipse photos, because each one had the sun a little less than round in a different way.

I think it's basically a mild version of rolling shutter distortion from camera movement. It seems to me that iS should help rather than hurt, but I'm sure it could be complex.

It would be easy to verify this with a tripod, though I haven't bothered - hoping instead for a global shutter before the next eclipse.

Guy Parsons wrote:

All I can put it down to is spurious OIS/IBIS/Digital corrections happening during a frame for no obvious reason.

I've seen this too. It was merely a curiosity for a while, but came to a pointy head when I found that I couldn't stack eclipse photos, because each one had the sun a little less than round in a different way.

I think it's basically a mild version of rolling shutter distortion from camera movement. It seems to me that iS should help rather than hurt, but I'm sure it could be complex.

It would be easy to verify this with a tripod, though I haven't bothered - hoping instead for a global shutter before the next eclipse.

Guy Parsons wrote:

All I can put it down to is spurious OIS/IBIS/Digital corrections happening during a frame for no obvious reason.

I've seen this too. It was merely a curiosity for a while, but came to a pointy head when I found that I couldn't stack eclipse photos, because each one had the sun a little less than round in a different way.

I think it's basically a mild version of rolling shutter distortion from camera movement. It seems to me that iS should help rather than hurt, but I'm sure it could be complex.

It would be easy to verify this with a tripod, though I haven't bothered - hoping instead for a global shutter before the next eclipse.

Guy Parsons wrote:

All I can put it down to is spurious OIS/IBIS/Digital corrections happening during a frame for no obvious reason.

I've seen this too. It was merely a curiosity for a while, but came to a pointy head when I found that I couldn't stack eclipse photos, because each one had the sun a little less than round in a different way.

I think it's basically a mild version of rolling shutter distortion from camera movement. It seems to me that iS should help rather than hurt, but I'm sure it could be complex.

It would be easy to verify this with a tripod, though I haven't bothered - hoping instead for a global shutter before the next eclipse.

_vlad wrote:

True - but sometimes SS shock doesn´t have those distinct two edges occurrence.

Ah yes, the shock effect can vary from that distinct double edge thing down to a lesser movement that just looks like a slight blur or misfocus.

I remember my GH4 which was never thought to be sensitive to SS - never ever saw double lines even with 14-140mk2. You say - hey but that is DIS1/2. But 100-300 mk1 is OIS only - however stepping up to GX80/GH5 even with this lens there is visible difference. My only explanation is SS - maybe I am wrong.

The folks who have fully electronic shutters (not me, all mechanical here) report that they usually can see a difference (particularly with tele lenses) when comparing mechanical to electronic shutter shots on the same camera and lens.

The problem is that terrible focal plane shutter being such a mechanical monster in such lightweight bodies.

So shutter shock is real and happens all the time, and it varies from basically near undetectable up to that severe double edge example I showed above.

If you can feel the shutter vibration when you take a shot then that's vibration that can be transmitted all through the body+lens combination. Use electronic shutter and nothing moves (except that pesky aperture) so shots should automatically be reliably cleaner.

Start rallies demanding global shutters, that's the best way to fix this ongoing problem.

Regards..... Guy

TomFid wrote:

Guy Parsons wrote:

All I can put it down to is spurious OIS/IBIS/Digital corrections happening during a frame for no obvious reason.

I've seen this too. It was merely a curiosity for a while, but came to a pointy head when I found that I couldn't stack eclipse photos, because each one had the sun a little less than round in a different way.

Oh dear. This is exactly what I was concerned about. I do a lot of stacking. Looks like my replacement lens won't cure the problem.

I think it's basically a mild version of rolling shutter distortion from camera movement. It seems to me that iS should help rather than hurt, but I'm sure it could be complex.

Presumably then you were shooting the eclipse hand-held?

It would be easy to verify this with a tripod, though I haven't bothered - hoping instead for a global shutter before the next eclipse.

The thinking here being that it shouldn't occur if using a tripod? That wouldn't help me unfortunately but it would be an interesting experiment to try. I did a couple of tripod bursts and didn't find anything untoward, but not enough for a decent test. Perhaps I'll try that more thoroughly.

gardenersassistant wrote:

TomFid wrote:

Guy Parsons wrote:

All I can put it down to is spurious OIS/IBIS/Digital corrections happening during a frame for no obvious reason.

I've seen this too. It was merely a curiosity for a while, but came to a pointy head when I found that I couldn't stack eclipse photos, because each one had the sun a little less than round in a different way.

Oh dear. This is exactly what I was concerned about. I do a lot of stacking. Looks like my replacement lens won't cure the problem.

I'd guess not, but hopefully it's fun anyway. Don't feel bad - my stacking success rate has been very low for macro, so you must be doing something right if you get anywhere with it!

I think it's basically a mild version of rolling shutter distortion from camera movement. It seems to me that iS should help rather than hurt, but I'm sure it could be complex.

Presumably then you were shooting the eclipse hand-held?

Right. My tripod was under a big spotting scope, and I backpacked into the back side of the Tetons, so I wasn't about to carry 2 tripods.

It would be easy to verify this with a tripod, though I haven't bothered - hoping instead for a global shutter before the next eclipse.

The thinking here being that it shouldn't occur if using a tripod?

Right.

That wouldn't help me unfortunately but it would be an interesting experiment to try. I did a couple of tripod bursts and didn't find anything untoward, but not enough for a decent test. Perhaps I'll try that more thoroughly.

If you're not using a tripod, are you using auto focus bracketing/stacking? I didn't realize that would work handheld.

TomFid wrote:

gardenersassistant wrote:

TomFid wrote:

Guy Parsons wrote:

All I can put it down to is spurious OIS/IBIS/Digital corrections happening during a frame for no obvious reason.

I've seen this too. It was merely a curiosity for a while, but came to a pointy head when I found that I couldn't stack eclipse photos, because each one had the sun a little less than round in a different way.

Oh dear. This is exactly what I was concerned about. I do a lot of stacking. Looks like my replacement lens won't cure the problem.

I'd guess not, but hopefully it's fun anyway. Don't feel bad - my stacking success rate has been very low for macro, so you must be doing something right if you get anywhere with it!

I'm doing it mostly with close-ups at the moment. I'm going to try macro when the invertebrates turn up later in the year.

I think it's basically a mild version of rolling shutter distortion from camera movement. It seems to me that iS should help rather than hurt, but I'm sure it could be complex.

Presumably then you were shooting the eclipse hand-held?

Right. My tripod was under a big spotting scope, and I backpacked into the back side of the Tetons, so I wasn't about to carry 2 tripods.

It would be easy to verify this with a tripod, though I haven't bothered - hoping instead for a global shutter before the next eclipse.

The thinking here being that it shouldn't occur if using a tripod?

Right.

That wouldn't help me unfortunately but it would be an interesting experiment to try. I did a couple of tripod bursts and didn't find anything untoward, but not enough for a decent test. Perhaps I'll try that more thoroughly.

If you're not using a tripod, are you using auto focus bracketing/stacking? I didn't realize that would work handheld.

Yes, it works fine. (Well, as fine as stacking does work, which as you'll know is sometimes not entirely straightforward!)

Related to this post and the response to it I'm going to make a separate thread about this stuff. I'll have some examples there.