why did my picture come out slightly blurry?

[iGas]

1/30 at 280mm is a recipe for blurry for anything moving.

1/30 is slow enough that normal "people movement" is often perceptible even at normal focal lengths, even when sitting still. Long focal lengths like 280mm multiply the effect of subject movement due to the magnification inherent to the focal length. At a wide angle, a person might fit entirely into the image (i.e., a full body shot)... take your image size to be an 8"x10" print. Look at what one inch on the print represents, at the plane of focus. It could be 6" or greater. Maybe that 1" matches the width of their head, or the length from their fingertip to their wrist, or the distance between buttons on a button-down shirt. Now look at an image taken at a long focal length, same subject distance, same print size. It is now possible that their head is taking up most or all of the image. That same 1" on the print might be the length of their nose, or the width of one of their eyes.

Now back that out to consider what "blurry" is. Let's simplify and say that it's a pixel of difference. (Look up "circle of confusion" if you want a more detailed discussion of how blurriness is defined in photography.) If a person sways 1/4" during the time of your exposure then it might not be perceptible at a wide angle, if that 1/4" takes up less than a pixel. But a long zoom will make that 1/4" take up multiple pixels and result in a blur. So it is all relative to a lot of things, including the pixel density of your sensor.

VR can correct your camera shake pretty well, but again this camera shake is magnified by long focal lengths. If your camera shakes 1mm during your exposure, this subtends a small arc (relative to the size of the image) at wide focal lengths, but it might be the equivalent of a sizeable fraction of the image at long focal lengths. VR is pretty good and can correct for much of this. I would say that 1/30 at 280mm with a Nikon VR lens should be possible for a completely static subject, if you have good technique and you're not being blown around by the wind or standing on a vibrating vehicle or something.

In the end you only have 3 variables to exposure: ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. Ironically, by being zoomed in so much, you hamstrung yourself with both shutter speed (because the shutter speed required to take a sharp photo of a moving subject decreases with the focal length) and aperture (because the maximum aperture of your f/4-f/5.6 lens gets smaller (numerically larger) as you reach the longer focal lengths). Your only recourse is to high ISO. Indoors at over 500mm equivalent, I would definitely try not to go slower than 1/100 shutter speed, and of course keep your lens at its maximum aperture (which also generally decreases sharpness, BTW -- most lenses are at their sharpest when they're stopped down a stop or two. This probably isn't a major factor in your case, but it contributes.). Bump your ISO as high as it needs to go to get the right exposure, or as high as it can go if it can't go that high.

BTW f/4 lets in twice as much light as f/5.6. f/2.8 lets in 4x as much light as f/5.6. So under the same conditions and camera settings, with an f/4 lens you would have had 1/60 shutter speed, and with an f/2.8 lens you would have had 1/120 shutter speed.

Long focal length/magnification doesn't have any thing to do with motion blur.

Camera: Nikon D3
Lens: Nikkor 1000mm f/11 AI Reflex
ISO: 3200
Focal length: 1000 mm
Aperture: F/11.0
Exposure time: 1/250 sec

Camera: Nikon D3
Lens: Nikkor 1000mm f/11 AI Reflex
ISO: 3200
Focal length: 1000 mm
Aperture: F/11.0
Exposure time: 1/80 sec

Using your suggestion the images should be unusable, and should be at the very minimum 1/1000s on such a lens.

 

[twistedlogic]

Using your suggestion the images should be unusable, and should be at the very minimum 1/1000s on such a lens.

No the lens isn't the issue, it is hand-holding at 1000mm.

 

[JohnnyRebel]

Using your suggestion the images should be unusable, and should be at the very minimum 1/1000s on such a lens.

The Rule-of-thumb is for handheld photography.

JR

 

[CptObvious]

Using the rule of thumb mentioned above, minimum shutter speed for a crop sensor body @ 280mm would be 1/420. Nikon claims up to 4 stops improvement with VR II, but real world is closer to 3. So you're looking at a minimum shutter speed around 1/60 to eliminate camera shake, assuming good technique. But your subject is moving and 1/60 is likely too slow to freeze motion, so I would agree with setting it to 1/125 or higher, max aperture and high ISO (3200).

That in mind, you're likely to still get less than great results shooting it wide open at high ISO. Those situations usually call for fast telephoto glass ($$$) or flash near the subject to properly expose.

 

[iGas]

No the lens isn't the issue, it is hand-holding at 1000mm.

The Rule-of-thumb is for handheld photography.

I agree, but the user is trying to say that long telephoto focal length magnify motion blur and that is not true, because the subjective movement in the frame is the same as normal or wide angle lens.

If the subject move 10 pixels (100, 1000 pixels, etc...) over to one side during the shutter release it will be the same physical effect on the film plane/digital sensor regardless of the lens focal length that you use.

In my above post I mentioned camera shake rule of thumb shutter speed = focal length is for handheld photography. (I'll edit/bold it for ease of viewing).

The rest are minimum shutter speed for stopping subject motion for handheld, VR/IS, or mono-pod/tri-pod photography.

 

[iGas]

Using the rule of thumb mentioned above, minimum shutter speed for a crop sensor body @ 280mm would be 1/420. Nikon claims up to 4 stops improvement with VR II, but real world is closer to 3. So you're looking at a minimum shutter speed around 1/60 to eliminate camera shake, assuming good technique. But your subject is moving and 1/60 is likely too slow to freeze motion, so I would agree with setting it to 1/125 or higher, max aperture and high ISO (3200).

That in mind, you're likely to still get less than great results shooting it wide open at high ISO. Those situations usually call for fast telephoto glass ($$$) or flash near the subject to properly expose.

Totally agree, however amateur photographers aren't very good at holding the camera still, hence you have to bump up the speed by 1 stop so it would be in the 1/100s or 1/125s shutter speed territory. And, that happen to match with subject stop motion shutter speed.

 

[CptObvious]

Totally agree, however amateur photographers aren't very good at holding the camera still, hence you have to bump up the speed by 1 stop so it would be in the 1/100s or 1/125s shutter speed territory. And, that happen to match with subject stop motion shutter speed.

Yep and that includes me I tend to have shaky hands and bump shutter speed a little higher to be safe.

I also forgot to suggest to OP that he switch to AF-C (continuous focus) mode and practice focusing on moving subjects. One of the best tips I learned was moving the auto-focus from the shutter button half-press to assigning it to one of the buttons in the back, usually AE-L (Google "back button focusing"). It seems harder at first but really helps to keep focus locked while you're tracking moving subjects and taking multiple shots.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

I agree, but the user is trying to say that long telephoto focal length magnify motion blur and that is not true, because the subjective movement in the frame is the same as normal or wide angle lens.

If the subject move 10 pixels (100, 1000 pixels, etc...) over to one side during the shutter release it will be the same physical effect on the film plane/digital sensor regardless of the lens focal length that you use.

In my above post I mentioned camera shake rule of thumb shutter speed = focal length is for handheld photography. (I'll edit/bold it for ease of viewing).

The rest are minimum shutter speed for stopping subject motion for handheld, VR/IS, or mono-pod/tri-pod photography.

Long focal lengths magnify motion blur, for the same moving subject at the same distance. Not saying anything about the same framing. If you're 100 yards away from a bird and using a 100mm lens, the bird will be very small in the frame, but slight motion won't be as big of a deal. If you're 100 yards away and using a 1000mm lens, the bird will take up more of the frame, and any motion will take up more pixels than with the 100mm lens. It's up to the photographer to decide whether the framing with the 100mm lens is acceptable. In the case of the bird, maybe not; the bird may simply be too small in the frame for the shot to be useful. But in the case of an indoor photo with a human-sized subject with a 55-300 f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens, perhaps a shot at 100mm @f/4.8 is acceptable versus a shot at 280mm @f/5.6. The framing will clearly be different, but maybe a relatively sharp whole body shot is better than a slightly blurry head and shoulders shot.

I also did not bring up panning or the use of special equipment. If you are an experienced pro and using a gimbal mount like the 1000mm photographer almost certainly was, and are panning along with the subject movement, your chances of getting a good shot at slower shutter speeds are improved. Not to mention using a pro body with a high FPS rate; holding the shutter button down @8-10FPS can result in a small number of useful images out of a stack of unusable ones.

Really though, 1/30 exposure for any moving subject *where the subject fills up much of the frame* (to get away from the focal length talk) is likely to show motion blur. 1/30 is simply long enough for motion to show. Moving up to 1/100 won't always freeze motion completely, but for relatively slow movements like a person walking, will probably do the trick.

 

[iGas]

Long focal lengths magnify motion blur, for the same moving subject at the same distance. Not saying anything about the same framing. If you're 100 yards away from a bird and using a 100mm lens, the bird will be very small in the frame, but slight motion won't be as big of a deal. If you're 100 yards away and using a 1000mm lens, the bird will take up more of the frame, and any motion will take up more pixels than with the 100mm lens. It's up to the photographer to decide whether the framing with the 100mm lens is acceptable. In the case of the bird, maybe not; the bird may simply be too small in the frame for the shot to be useful. But in the case of an indoor photo with a human-sized subject with a 55-300 f/4.5-5.6 zoom lens, perhaps a shot at 100mm @f/4.8 is acceptable versus a shot at 280mm @f/5.6. The framing will clearly be different, but maybe a relatively sharp whole body shot is better than a slightly blurry head and shoulders shot.

I also did not bring up panning or the use of special equipment. If you are an experienced pro and using a gimbal mount like the 1000mm photographer almost certainly was, and are panning along with the subject movement, your chances of getting a good shot at slower shutter speeds are improved. Not to mention using a pro body with a high FPS rate; holding the shutter button down @8-10FPS can result in a small number of useful images out of a stack of unusable ones.

Really though, 1/30 exposure for any moving subject *where the subject fills up much of the frame* (to get away from the focal length talk) is likely to show motion blur. 1/30 is simply long enough for motion to show. Moving up to 1/100 won't always freeze motion completely, but for relatively slow movements like a person walking, will probably do the trick.

I think you are error on subjective coverage area.

The effect will be the same and shutter speed will be the same, when the camera is on a tri-pod with telephoto or ultra-wide lens taking a picture of a the same subject/person. It may be that you only need to be 100 yards away with a 1000mm lens to fill the frame of the subject, but have to be 5 yards away with a 50mm to fill the frame.

 

[slashbinslashbash]

I think you are error on subjective coverage area.

The effect will be the same and shutter speed will be the same, when the camera is on a tri-pod with telephoto or ultra-wide lens taking a picture of a the same subject/person. It may be that you only need to be 100 yards away with a 1000mm lens to fill the frame of the subject, but have to be 5 yards away with a 50mm to fill the frame.

Right. You are talking about "same focal length + subject distance combination to achieve the same framing." I'm talking about something totally different.

Say you are 100 yards away; take that as a given. If the subject is moving at 30 inches per second, left to right, from the point of view of the photographer, that motion will be more apparent with the 1000mm lens than with the 50mm lens. In 1/30th of a second they will move 1 inch.

With a 50mm lens at 100 yards, the horizontal field of view is 216 feet across. Take a roughly 10mp sensor with 3650 pixels across the horizontal dimension. This means that each pixel corresponds to roughly 0.71 inches in the real world, at the 100 yard focus distance. So during the 1/30th of a second exposure, the subject moves a little more than one pixel across the frame. (Of course, it may be hard to see the subject in the frame at all, at this distance and focal length.)

With a 1000mm lens at 100 yards, the horizontal field of view is about 11 feet across. In this case, each pixel corresponds to 0.036" in the real world. The subject will move roughly 27 pixels across the frame during the 1/30th exposure.

My point is that even slow subject movement is magnified when the camera is apparently closer to the subject. Whether this magnification is achieved by actually getting physically closer to the subject, or by using a long focal length lens, doesn't matter. But the photographer should always beware of using too long a focal length with a moving subject, if the light is insufficient for a fast shutter speed. By zooming in on the subject and making it bigger, you're also zooming in on the subject's *movement* and making it bigger. With variable maximum aperture lenses, the case is even worse because of the smaller apertures at longer focal lengths.