Time to end the mirror slap myth

Andy K · Jan 31, 2009

The trick with long exposures is to cover the lens with your hand or something while opening and then closing the shutter.

Kent10D · Jan 31, 2009

Hassy 503cx with the standard 80 mm lens or shorter at 1/125 sec. and above ... no problem handheld at all. Sharp, crisp, beautiful.

At 1/60 ... no tripod, no shot ... unless I'm leaning against something solid and my last cup of coffee was over an hour ago.

Q.G. · Jan 31, 2009

What the video shows is not (!) that mirror prerelease (i'll start a new thread titled "Time to end the mirror lock up myth") is useless.
It certainly can make a difference.

What it does show however (and i have used it as an illustration before in another thread here) is that unless you are able to hold a camera in your hand without a coin balanced on it falling over, you should never ever again even consider thinking that a TLR is better for handholding than a SLR.

Great video, but used here to illustrate the wrong point.

Q.G. · Jan 31, 2009

katphood said:
[...] Then add a stop, taking into consideration that the test was performed on flat concrete and not under field conditions. (Don't you just love setting up your 'pod in a grassy field?)

My results, that work for me and *maybe* you: Mirror slap matters, but not as much as a tripod. A tripod is good, but a weighted one (attach some weight to it) is much better. To paraphrase Ansel Adams, the best tripod is a 12-ton boulder. Placing a baggie of sand or pebbles on the camera helps too. Placing my hand there made things worse. Again YMMV.

Actually, "a 12-ton boulder" and "flat concrete" makes things worse.
All they do, being absolutely inert, is reflect any movement back to where it came from.
If the camera cannot dissipate the energy, cannot make other things shake as well, it has to cope with all of it, i.e. do all the shaking, itself.

So a grassy underground and your hands on the tripod mounted camera are better than a 12-ton boulder.
As is not tightening every screw your tripod and tripod head has as tight as possible.
Allowing all these things to move a tiny bit results in less shake than letting the camera move alone.

tim_walls · Jan 31, 2009

Q.G. said:
Actually, "a 12-ton boulder" and "flat concrete" makes things worse.
All they do, being absolutely inert, is reflect any movement back to where it came from.

Oh, I'm not sure about that - the Earth moves for me when I'm using my Mamiya

Q.G. · Jan 31, 2009

All i ever got was weak in the knees, making me wobble.
I knew i was using the wrong gear ...

2F/2F · Jan 31, 2009

Lee L said:
OK, I have to leave the thread now and wrap my head around the idea of Majestic, Gitzo, and Davis and Sanford (wherefore art thou ampersand?) being fancy obscure brands.

Then I'll go ask J. Alfred how to do the rolled trousers thing.

Lee

I was hoping that I would not have to state outright that the "fancy" comment was intended to be funny.....ah, well.

Adrian Twiss · Jan 31, 2009

dpurdy said:
House does suck.

Speaking as a Brit I find Hugh Lawrie's american accent somewhat unconvincing.

df cardwell · Jan 31, 2009

Adrian Twiss said:
Speaking as a Brit I find Hugh Lawrie's american accent somewhat unconvincing.

Adrian: speaking as an american, Hugh's accent is perfect, 99.9% of the time. That's what we sound like. It is far better than mine, which has been polluted by all those Canadians and Brits.

Steve Smith · Jan 31, 2009

Adrian Twiss said:
Speaking as a Brit I find Hugh Lawrie's american accent somewhat unconvincing.

However, Dick Van Dyke did a perfect English accent in Mary Poppins.

Steve.

Ulrich Drolshagen · Jan 31, 2009

Lee L said:
Anyone recall the location of a test I remember seeing a good while back ... an "artificial star" (pinpoint light source) shot with a camera on several tripods at multiple shutter speeds. Something in the 1/8 to 1/125 second was the worst shake, and longer than 1/8th was as sharp as the faster shutter speeds. Could have been Photo Techniques.

Barry Thornton, Edge of Darkness

Camera tested was Rolleiflex SL66

Ulrich

Andy K · Jan 31, 2009

Steve Smith said:
However, Dick Van Dyke did a perfect English accent in Mary Poppins.

Steve.

Gore bloimey guvnor, you done got that roight!

Bill Harrison · Jan 31, 2009

Don't slap me, me...

Edge of Darkness by Barry Thornton, pub.Amphoto Books.... Page 65, gives a very clear example of the effects of mirror slap. I tend to use my Nikon slr with wide angle lenses as silly as that may seem when hand holding and tripod over 50mm. God I've fallen in love again, with my Leicas....

Bill Harrison · Jan 31, 2009

Slapped anyway

While I was looking for the book for the page #.... Ulrich obviously has his better organized or a wonderful memory... likely both...

Ulrich Drolshagen · Jan 31, 2009

Bill Harrison said:
Edge of Darkness by Barry Thornton, pub.Amphoto Books.... Page 65, gives a very clear example of the effects of mirror slap. I tend to use my Nikon slr with wide angle lenses as silly as that may seem when hand holding and tripod over 50mm. God I've fallen in love again, with my Leicas....

Thornton tested his SL66. It has a focal plane shutter. So in my opinion it is ineligible to extend the results to the Hassy. That said, I can not see any difference between my negatives with and without MLU made with my SL66.

Ulrich

Lee L · Jan 31, 2009

Thanks for the Thornton reference. I was thinking that may have been one source and didn't have the book at hand. Checked it this morning, and it's basically the same test, but the results are different from another test that I saw a number of years before I read Thornton. I'm still thinking it was probably Photo Techniques, and a decade or more before Edge of Darkness. It did have results similar to what I described earlier, a peak in vibration on a tripod around what is usually considered the low end of handholdable, with less vibration at higher and lower speeds.

Lee

katphood · Jan 31, 2009

The point I was trying to make earlier is that *you* must test *your* equipment yourself to (A) find out what speeds cause fuzzy pics due to camera shake and (B) what works to eliminate it (more weight on the 'pod, bag of pebbles, MLU if you have it).

I've been doing OK with my Bogen / Manfrotto 3001 'pod and my 486 ballhead. I know that I should add whatever weight I can to it and at shutter speeds below 1/30, use the self-timer / mirror pre-fire on my Nikon FM2n. On my Pentax 645n, I can't do anything with the mirror, but it surprisingly behaves very well w/o it.

Now let's talk monopods...er...nevemind.

Mark Layne · Jan 31, 2009

df cardwell said:
Hasselblads suck. Leicas suck. Zeiss is crap. Everything good is crap,
and unless it is totally worthless, its overpriced. If it isn't complete shit,
it isn't worth having.

OK, have fun. I'm pouring more beer and going back to watch "House".

Well lucky you - I'm going to shovel snow. And that Superbowl thing will probably prevent me watching the Australian Open final.

I trust that beer is Moosehead?
Mark

removed account4 · Jan 31, 2009

you took the word right out of my head walter!
i was thinking the same thing ...

walter23 said:
It may not be a myth, but when you handhold a speed graphic at 1/40th as the huge 5" x 5" curtain goes KER-THWAP-WHIRRRRRRR-CHUNKA! and get a reasonably sharp result you start worrying less about it:

(NOTE: not an example of a good photo, just one of only a couple of handheld speed graphic shots I have so far).

Having said that, just go ahead and try shooting a 400mm lens on 35mm without mirror lockup and a cable release... I dare you! As a matter of habit (and tested good practice, for that matter) I use MLU for really long lens use or whenever my shutter speed is in the 1/40th to 1 second range on a tripod.

df cardwell · Jan 31, 2009

I trust that beer is Moosehead?
Mark

USB... maybe some Moose for the game, though !

Allan Swindles · Jan 31, 2009

Know your cameras limitations, more importantly, know your own! The biggest problem is usually caused by the little nut behind the viewfinder!!

tim_walls · Feb 1, 2009

walter23 said:
Having said that, just go ahead and try shooting a 400mm lens on 35mm without mirror lockup and a cable release...

400mm lens on 35mm without mirror lockup or a cable release on a very light-weight Feisol tripod:
(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Well, you did ask.

(Of course, I *should* have used mirror lock up, but it was cold out there and I couldn't remember the custom function off the top of my head...)

bdial · Feb 1, 2009

If the engineer gods at Hasselblad didn't want us to use mirror lock up, they wouldn't have provided the button.
Likewise, they are equipped with not one, but two tripod screws.

The flower was photographed using the set up in the B&W shot. Mostly I used MLU, but can't say whether it was used on this particular shot or not.

Sirius Glass · Feb 2, 2009

chriscrawfordphoto said:
My hasselblad 503cx has such harsh mirror slap that it makes the whole tripod (a bogen 3011) vibrate! I'd never noticed it till today when i had the camera on the tripod after shooting a roll of Acros. I was just playing with the camera and i fired it with the cable release while i had my hand on a tripod leg and it SHOOK. Even with the mirror prereleased, the tripod vibrated when i released the shutter! It doesn't seem to be affecting the photos, as they're very sharp.

Sounds like you are due for a service including some parts replacements. The only time I need a tripod is when the exposure is less that 1/focal length. I only lock up the mirror for fairly long exposures.

Steve

Sirius Glass · Feb 2, 2009

dpurdy said:
House does suck.

What he said. It is the same plot for every show. You can tell what time it is by what is going on at the time.

Sirius Yawn ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Steve

Time to end the mirror slap myth

Attachments

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency