New lens (135mm) - simple question

[a_spaceman]

hi all!
just got a new lens today for my minolta srt 101b, a rokkor mc 135mm f/3.5

what shutter speed would you raccomend for shooting with it? would 1/125 be slow enough to catch some movement in case of shaky hands?
thanks a lot!
a.

 

[TJ K]

Shutter speed depends directly on your subject. It isn't your lens that matter in this case. What are you trying to shoot?

 

[Josh66]

Well, I think the lens matters some...

A longer lens will need a faster shutter speed (hand-held).

I usually try to stay above 1/200th at 135mm, but I think 1/125 would still work with steady hands.

 

[Johnboy2978]

Generally, the rule of thumb is the reciprocal of the max focal length. I.e. if you have 50mm lens, you should be able to shoot 1/50 hand held w/o shake/motion blur. If you have a 70-300mm then somewhere around 1/500 probably.

 

[Do'Urden's Eyes]

With your shaky hands id say maybe 1/200 or faster. To freeze action really just depends on how fast the subject is moving. a walking or laughing person will be properly frozen at 1/200 as long as theyre not violent and convulsive laughers i suppose.

 

[Captain IK]

Freezing action is one thing, but you can get a blurry picture shooting a still object if the shutter speed is too low to compensate for camera shake...and the longer the lens...the more camera shake.

 

[Dubious Drewski]

Yeah, I just shot a hockey game the other night. It was my first one and it was also the first time I used my 50-135 f2.8 in that type of environment. I did the almost whole thing at 1/125, f2.8 and almost always at full 135mm. Now after getting home and sorting through the photos, I regret doing 1/125 the whole time. My ISO was hovering around 100-200 and at the time I was thinking "Awesome! I'm going to have such clean images to work with!". No. I should have bumped it up to 800 or higher and shot 1/350 or something.

So in my opinion, if you're shooting anything slower than a hockey player, 1/125 is great. If it's close to that speed or faster, go with a quicker shutter, depending on how much light you're getting.

 

[a_spaceman]

thanks you all.
yes, my question wasn't about shooting moving subjects but avoiding camera shake.
what i'm looking for is the slowest speed as the lens being 3.5 wold require quite a lot of light to shoot at 3.5 and shutter speed at 1/500. will do some tests within this week i guess...!

 

[Do'Urden's Eyes]

It doesnt have as much to do with the aperture as it does the focal length you're using. Higher focal lengths tend to exaggerate even the slightest movement of the camera, to to compensate for that you need a quick shutter speed. Like some one mentioned earlier a good rule of thumb is to use the inverse of your focal length. 100mm = 1/100, 200mm = 1/200 and so on