Rule of Doubles: 8 STOPS below the Reciprocal Rule!
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- Опубліковано 4 жов 2024
- The Rule of Doubles guarantees you the cleanest possible low-light photos, allowing you to shoot with longer shutter speeds and lower ISOs. I regularly shoot handheld at 8 stops below the reciprocal rule.
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Way back in the dark ages of film, I was in photography school. In our first year technical class, we were given a practice exercise to teach breath control and how to minimize camera shake. We had to take a small mirror ( a little larger than the front element of the camera) and rubber band it to the front of the lens barrel. Mirror side out. Then stand in a room with a light, line up the light and camera so that the light reflected onto the wall in from of us. This was the film days, so we would dry fire the camera and practice not letting the reflection move when we tripped the shutter.Its a little like firing a rifle. Stance with legs spread, one behind the other. Arms against chest. Breathe in, exhale all out, hold, and squeeze the shutter button. Once you got it on fast speeds, you would slow the shutter. I got to the point where I could hold it pretty steady on exposures into the 1 to 1/2 second range. The less bounce in the reflection, the sharper the image will be. Low tech, but effective.
That does not sound fun, not at all. Wax on, wax off.
That sounds like an amazingly useful exercise, even for folks in these modern time.
"so that the light reflected onto the wall in from of us" just could not understand this. Can you-reformulate it?
"It's a little like firing a rifle."
I'd say more than a little. Most of what he talks about--keeping both eyes open, supporting your arms on your body, and maintaining your balance--are key parts of a good standing position.
@@neanu66 They would use the mirror to reflect a spot of light onto the wall, then practice triggering the camera with a minimum of motion. That way they got a visible representation of how much they were moving the camera. You could do the same thing by strapping a laser pointer to your lens barrel: you can see the dot move as you move the camera when you trigger the shutter (or do other stuff, depending on what you want to practice).
I feel this was a good video especially for less experienced photographers. A lot of videos from the more well known UA-cam photographers have become mostly ads for camera companies, in particular Sony. It was great to see a straight up tutorial video. I hope the trend will now start becoming more of these educational type videos.
I would say yeah you're right. Except that Tony's using a Sony camera (with built-in IS) as well. Show us that same trick with a Nikon bro!
I will say that is exactly why this works so well. The A7Riii does have good IS and great low light capability making this process much easier. You could do this with a Nikon or any other brand but not as well as with that Sony. So while he IS using a Sony I don't feel this video comes off quite as disingenuous as I have seen before.
Gerald Bertram I can respect that
After watching your video I headed out to photograph some skipper butterflies. I got great shots with my 150-600 zoom at 600mm with a shutter speed of 160 which is far slower than I would typically shoot. That was as far as I needed to go to get my ISO to near 100 but I am confident I could go even slower, assuming I take a longer burst of shots as you describe. The resulting images look much better after processing. Not every UA-cam video has content I can put to use, so I truly appreciate this one. Thanks!
Thanks Tony. Learned three very useful lessons today.
You guys are AWESOME. I have learned more from this channel than any other photography channel on youtube. I will certainly be buying the SDP book.
Didn't expect to learn anything new from this Video. Then you hit me with that tip to keep the left eye open. Great advice. Thanks!
I watched this video last night so said I'd try it out today.. And I was shocked with the results.. I even got sharper images.. Great video as always Tony.. 👌
#1 photography channel too!
Great to have found you here, after listening to your podcasts :D
I just want you to know that this tip has been huge for me. I had never really thought about it before, and it's cleaned up so many shots of mine already. So, so good. Thanks so much, guys.
I read a tip a years ago about taking three continuous pictures when hand holding a camera, and 1 out of the 3 will likely be sharp. I'm surprised more people don't talk/use this technique.
That is awesome method! It is situational, but definitely worth knowing.
This is great quality content. Much better than the vlog intel commercial.
Great video Tony! To the point, extremely informative, and easy to digest. Straight up balling charts too. Do more like this please
Tony, you are great. T
his was SO helpful for us micro four thirds users. Combine your rule with ETTR and you can really shoot sharp photos, even in very low light, with a good lens, of course.. This really minimizes the downside of four thirds sensor function.Thank you for all you do...so well!
Yayyyy Tony is back!
The advice of keeping both eyes open is great to hear! As someone who came into photography from a firearms background, I've noticed a ton of overlap in how you shoot a photo, and how you shoot a firearm.
Proper breathing technique can make a world of difference in addition to keeping both eyes open. That is. if you keep your focus locked, arms tucked relatively close to your body, and concentrate on your breathing, when you get to the point of the air expelled from your lungs, take the shot. The idea is that the least amount of shake in your fingers, wrists, arms, and upper body is going to be in that moment, leading to a lower chance of shake off target. Tripods and monopods are an excellent alternative to this obviously, but sometimes you just want to be mobile and keep moving on to whatever's next, so having a good secondary option is a must.
Thanks Tony, great video! I've been doing photgraphy for about 10 years now and it's been quite some time since I've actually learned something new!
As always your best work. I am going to try this tomorrow
Cool technique. Thanks, Tony!
Love this video. Actually woke up early to shoot just to test this out. I love all your videos but this one helped me shoot better (and steadier) with what I got instead of wishing I had the latest and greatest. Thanks!
That's awesome!
Fantastic trick!! I will definitely try that!! Thanks!
I learned to become stable by shooting video with a Blackmagic camera and manual lens. Handheld. Sitting and using your knees and elbows to steady yourself to at least 3 points.
For stills, I take taken sharp long exposures up to 1.5" while standing. It took me 3 tries but holding my breath helped. And the stabilization by Sony.
Another tip for shooting at slow shutter speeds is to press the shutter at the end of exhaling to prevent any chest movements from ruining your shot.
I was just about to add the importance of using your breath correctly, which I'm a bit surprised Tony didn't mention. When I was in the army we were taught a specific way to use our breath to steady our shots on the shooting range (which is directly transferable to taking pictures):
1. Take a couple of fairly deep breaths to relax you down.
2. After breathing in the last time, you breathe out halfway and hold your breath.
3. Now slowly and steadily squeeze the trigger until the shot is fired unintentionally (don't forcefully pull the trigger as it'll shake the camera/gun).
4. Be mindful not to release the trigger too quickly.
Elgsdyr I was scrolling down to say the same. Adding the breath control to this burst shooting should get get results.
Oh, that´s the Rule of Breathing =) Good idea
Point 4 is important only for taking "long" exposure pictures, not for shooting with guns, right? :-)
Love the RB67 in the still life!
This blew my mind. I've been trying to shoot at slower speeds lately, but it had never occurred to me to use continuous shooting to end up with a steady shot.
Thanks for the tip!
Thanks so much for this. One of my best wedding pictures was a shutter speed that I would not have been comfortable in if I were to set it manually (I was in shutter priority). And I never knew why it was so sharp lol. I always shoot in continuous and take a couple of shots to give me options.
Fine points of a technique always welcome !
Tony, this format is awesome and it really gave me some genuinely new and useful insights!
Another bit of useful info for my tool box.
Great advice. I'll try this. Thankyou
Interesting idea. I will try it for sure!
In the film era when shake was a real issue, I found that holding the lens from the bottom and bracing my elbow on my lower chest really seemed to help- "bone to bone" as in traditional archery.
Another great instructional winner.
as always, brilliant idea
Great video, I'm gonna have to try this. I have always shot with both eyes open. I learned that one as a teen when I used to hunt. Now I use a Canon instead of a gun....🤔
jenky1044
Wait, so Disney Pocahontas wasn't lying to us???
Not a photographer yet .
Still learning .
Thanx for the info .
Wow that was a fascinating tip and something I haven't seen anyone else talk about. Might get a bit trickier with moving subjects but great for when you need it and can use the technique!
It's a great trick but there's a caveat with Sony cameras like the A7R2: when in continuous shooting mode, the bit-depth is reduced from 14 to 12 bits! So you'll lose a bit of shadow recovery margin and possibly there's a noise penalty as well (don't remember but I think so). Too bad, you'll have to use a remote timer trigger to do this in single-shot mode.
Cool advice Tony.
Interesting -- I've rarely been brave enough to dip more than a couple of stops longer than the reciprocal rule when hand-holding but I'll give this a try. Also an interesting tip about keeping the other eye open to judge movement and adjust stability of holding ... If I get achieve reasonable sharpness at anything *close* to a second at 200mm it will be game-changing for handheld shooting of still subjects (especially in places that don't allow tripods). Thanks for the tips and keep them coming!
Keeping both eyes open is also one of the major advice's for shooting a firearm.
Great tips thanks for sharing! I find holding my breath just before I shoot also helps
I use mean averaging in photoshop quite a bit to 'simulate' slow shutters. I find that you have to be careful that the individual frames aren't faster than your shutter speed - eg if your camera shoots 6FPS you can't go below 1/10th or you get 'gaps' that can mess up things like water. I've used this technique mainly on cameras, but i've also mashed the shutter on my phone and aligned the layers in photoshop and it worked really well.
What I picked up in the film days is start to slowly breathe out as you depress the shutter. If you are breathing in, I at least have a tendency to lift the camera up.
I also agree with keeping your other eye open.
Good vid!
Great tips, very useful, love the "both eye viewfinder" tips
Stunningly simple. But already feel it's going to work. Thanks!
Interesnting, I never thought of it as a rule. I just did it!
So glad to see this video! I've had a similar (but not nearly as well-developed) notion in mind for a long time. It occurred to me that the reciprocal rule was based on the statistics of typical involuntary muscle movement for a v narrow range of intervals -- in the range of, say, 5 to 30 ms -- corresponding to most commonly used focal lengths. For single shots over longer durations than 1/(focal length) without the aid of image stabalization, we've all experienced the significant fall off in keepers but that offers little guidance bc statistical samples of one (single shots) are meaningless. However, involuntary muscle movement is a form of noise and most noise mechanisms follow statistical trends that themselves depend on measurement bandwidth or observation interval.
A good example is thermal noise in electronics -- often the dominant noise term -- which exhibits 1/root(frequency) statistics. But at sufficiently low frequencies (long durations), another mechanism -- often referred to as shot noise -- exhibits 1/frequency statistics and rises to dominate the overall noise profile. The thought I've been dragging around is that human physiology may exhibit similar or at least parallel noise terms. The statistical trends may be different but the notion that the noise characteristics depend on the interval of interest may apply.
I've periodically searched for articles in the medical literature (such as I can access without being a member of the medical professions) for research papers about involuntary muscle movement. Not surprisingly, nearly all focus on cases where the involuntary movements are significant and well outside the range exhibited by typical healthy adults.
>>>>> If anyone can point me to research papers or other information about the spectral statistics of involuntary muscle movement in typical healthy adults, I would appreciate it very much.
That's a clever trick!
I am going to go try this. Thanks
Nice idea Tony! I will definitely be trying this one!
If you shoot jpeg, then the best image is often the largest for any given ISO-value.
Okaro X That’s genius! I wonder if that would work for compressed raw as well. :0
Okaro X That's brilliant.
So theoretically, bigger is better and newer is better with this technique.
I have also being doing something similar. One difference is going for three rather than two shots for the first step. This allows for one shot in between pressing the shutter and releasing it.
Great tip! I'll try it.
This seems like a technical explanation of the old spray n' pray "technique" lol
I just tried your technique with a Nikkor Micro 85 mm and I got a decent image a 1/10 sec. ISO dropped from 10000 to 1600. Thanks I will definitely make use of this.
I just tried this and got a decent shot at 1/2 of a second. Excellent
Decent for scaling down only. The whole point of utilising expensive cams and IS lenses is not lowering, but *maintaining* reciprocal rule, or increasing 2-4 times [ [1 / (4×f) ], while *lowering* sensor gain. Why? To allow for superior magnification, higher lpi print, and superior colour output.
Zvonimir Tosic I'm using a D700 so not the latest high ISO performance, so it's a useful trick for me, even with a 2.8 lens
Thanks Tony!!!
Monopod with a tilt head. They usually allow them in places where tripods are not welcome, and you can use them for most types of photography.
+1
Competition pistol shooters seem to all aim the same way. With iron sights, they put the focus as hard as possible on the front sight. If the target isn't blurry and the front sight in sharp focus, they miss.
I've found it helps to put one corner of a focus point indicator on a specific feature. Instead of looking at the composition in general, when I release the shutter I have only one thing I'm looking at. The "front sight" (the focus point indicator).
I could be completely off base, but it seems to help with my unstabilized 70-300mm kit lens.
Worked great on my Fuji, add in stabilization you can get sharp images with this technique at very low shutter speeds, then add in electronic shutter (totally silent shooting with zero shutter shake/movement
Great tips thanks!
Amazing video,, and i really notice a huge difference when i open both eyes
Awesome tip!!! Thanx!!!
Definitely a hot one my dude
Great video!
great video thanks Mr Northrup :)
Spray n pray! I do it all the time shooting aircraft trying to get the perfect prop blur.
Hey Tony, really lovely tip. I will try it out. Thanks!
Excellent! Thank you.
Hey, Tony ! Unless I got all my definitions wrong :
When you go from speed 1/200 to speed 1/100 you DO NOT double your shutter speed ; you DIVIDE it by TWO !
What you DO double, of course, is your exposure time.
Why would you divide if you're doubling? What's double a 1 sec shutter?
Just like shooting a rifle or pistol, I find that exhaling and holding my breath just before pressing the shutter button makes for a steadier platform for shooting photos. I'm interested in seeing how this will work combining it with your tip.
..Joe
Aren't you supposed to exhale and then hold your breathe?
@@sadbravesfan Yes. You breathe normally, then just sigh your breath away, but don't completely empty your lungs. The key phrase is to "sigh your breath away" so that you still have enough air left to talk if you wanted to. This is a technique I teach marksmen/women in my role as an NRA rifle coach.
Genius man!! Great advice.
Thanks again
Interesting and great explaination. Side-note, my first 35mm camera was a used Voigtlander rangefinder (no battery required, bad rangerfinder focusing). Next camera was Yashica Electro GTN, like the one in your background but black. Final film camera was my Nikon EM with 3 prime small e lenses (favorite was a small 100 mm with quick focusing...this camera died on the day my daughter graded from high school). Now using a Canon PowerShot G9X mark I.
this is definitely a great tip Tony ,thanks so much !!!
As with the best of ideas, it sounds so simple. Why didn't I think of the rule of doubles? As I use a non-IS 400mm f5.6 lens for bird photography, this should help me to get the ISO down to something reasonable in low light. Great stuff!
Good tip, thanks.
Bloody brilliant
Great video, Tony.
You’re a genius Tony!
Great advice for shooting stationary objects. Motion blur is a random process, which means every so often it will effectively be zero. So, take enough pictures and statistically speaking, some should be sharp.
Oh the joys of shooting digital! :)
This is something I need to practice !! thanks for sharing !
Thumbs up to Tony for holding a A7RIII and a 70-200 f/2.8 in one hand!
Getting closer to 1M subs.
Nice Tips Tony , Have a Great day .
not sure if it's only me but this videos seems like real smooth, and more natural / lively image than others i saw. maybe because most of scene ,contains a bit of frame movements?
you can try hold the camera out so the camera strap around you neck has tension in it. I've found this helps steady the shot.
Woahhh!!!! That is a great lesson! Thank you! I gotta get your book :)
One more great video, thanks Tony. I only have one problem, I'm left eye 😩😩
Wow, that is a smart technique! Thanks
thats an awsome tip! cheers
Do ur birds not move, Tony? That’s always been the bigger issue than my own shake.
They do, and branches move, too. But they move inconsistently so this technique still works.
I've been doing something very similar with my Fuji X-Pro-2 for some time now. As you have noted, the Fuji lenses are so sharp it is difficult to get sharp images hand-held. With this technique it's much easier (FYI, I am currently trying out an X-H1 but even though it has IBIS I'm not wild about this camera)
thank you, good tip
I use a small Joby Gorillapod on the camera and brace 2 of the legs against my chest and one on my left arm. It's super-steady.
If you shoot with Sony, assign a custom button to ISO ASS (wonder why Sony picked that name) When your camera is in aperture priority, start shooting with ISO ASS set to FASTER so that all your shots are free from motion blur; after getting the shot, set the ISO ASS to STD mode (again, wonder why Sony picked that name) to reduce the shutter speed. Finally, you can set the ISO ASS to SLOWER to achieve the cleanest ISO setting possible.
The entire process can be achieved in seconds.
ASS + STD are terms having sexual overtones/undertones, and should've been avoided by Sony.
Thanks.
Higher shutter speed means higher ISO setting = more NOISE
So sony cameras have a little ASS and STD modes in them😅.
Like imagine yourself on the street talking to a friend “hey change your ASS to STD mode”
Only the Mark IIIs have that option unfortunately
I don't have IS but do pretty well braced and using a rifleman's breath technique. The middle frame of a three shot burst w/ my 300mm at ~1/125 on the D7000 (cropped sensor) is usually good... at least it is as sharp as my old lens can get.
Great tip! I need to try this out.
If you don't need to crop (or do heavy post-processing), you can also use 4K Video.
With 30fps (or even 60fps on GH5/G9) you can get a lot of sharp and clean images by doing that.
With the right player (MPC-BE for example) it's rather easy to step through the single frames and extract pngs out of it.
He's talking about getting usable shots with lower shutter speeds than 1/60 or 1/125 that the 4K you mention would be at.
You can use 1/60 at 60fps or 1/30 at 30fps.
But true, you can use even slower shutter-speeds with his method.
Working in video my best handheld steady tip is to breath with your stomach.
Well, for starters, exhale and hold your breath and use as little force as possible in holding the camera and squeezing the shutter button. A really light grip helps to eliminate some shake, using the camera's own inertia. Use anything as a brace or rest, like a fence post. Failing a fencepost, use your own knee as a rest. Putting tension on the strap also helps to stabilise the camera. A heavy camera has more inertia and will simply shake less. Light weight may be more comfortable and easier on you, but it's not necessarily better.