lowest shutter speed for hand held success

Alan Klein said:

It's not only shutter speed. It's how much you're magnifying the image either by using a telephoto lens or by enlargement of the print.

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Indeed. A 6 x 4" print and a 16 x 20" have different requirements. To completely eliminate camera shake requires a surprisingly high shutter speed. On the other steady hand you can get away 1/8 sec in a small print.

I have found that cameras with a bit of weight can help with slow shutter speeds. One of my favorite cameras is the Nikon F5. It is one that you either love or hate, but I find it has enough heft to remain steady and the mirror damping is faultless which helps considerably.

Inertia is a very handy tool for keeping things steady. For a camera it becomes a fun balancing act between what is light enough to carry without making you feel tired or be needlessly difficult to hold comfortably, and having enough mass that it resists movement.

It becomes especially handy for getting clean panning shots where you're keeping one part of the image in sharp focus, and letting the rest of the scene fade into motion blur.

phelger said:

David - your format is 135. For many years it was too for me and I always worked on to how to obtain sharpness untill I had read enough books explaining what is sharpness! Constraints of film size and lens resolution set a limit to the sharpness - law of nature! I made decent enlargements 12 x 16, but was'nt convinced. Then I got a Mamiya 7, and immediately understood what a sharp print is!
So your choice is IMHO : EITHER use a tripod (or not) and accept what 135 format can do (which can be incredibly good, just look at works of great photograpers, e.g. Cartier-Bresson); OR get yourself an MF camera (when I came to that point my greatest issue was I had to get a new enlarger!)
Good luck, Peter

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First, I am not 'desperate' for sharpness: I can easily get that with a tripod. However, your post is rather interesting, in that I STARTED with MF (age 16, 1966. Minolta Autocord CDS) and it took until 1978 to 'graduate' to 35mm. I was so impressed with a Canon AE-1.

How so 'to graduate' to a smaller format? 35mm has many advantages over MF: greater depth of field, more success with hand held shots, and films that are very slow. I have some 35mm Kodak ImageLink microfilm (unfortunately this does not come perforated) that you can actually run through an SLR if you try hard enough (either reverse-wise or 'over the sprockets' regular way: it is not easy or predictable) but the image quality would match or exceed most MF attempts with standard films. I will say this outright: the ONLY time MF beats 35mm is when you have SLOW film in your MF camera. If you do as most: use 400 speed in MF you will NOT be any better than those using SLOW film, even TMAX100, in 35mm. Since there is a nearly two stop advantage with 35mm, the resolution test is entirely valid and fair. - David Lyga

Well I would agree. I go back and forth at a whim between formats... I have always been able to get "specific qualities" from 35mm slow film.

When I shoot medium and large format, I give up "spontaneity" of the decisive moment, in exchange for a negative that offers "a little more" in the darkroom.