Do you often hold the camera to shoot but photo is always not clear and sharp. It looks a bit blurry? Especially in an insufficient light indoor or shooting at night, the situation is more serious. At this time, you have a high chance of blurring the photo due to hand shake. The solution is to learn to apply the very important concept of “safe shutter speed”.

Calculation method of “safe shutter speed”

Safe Shutter Speed = 1/focal length

The above is the formula of “safe shutter”. Is it simple? As long as your shutter speed can meet the safety shutter or faster, under normal circumstances, handheld shooting will not appear blurry, you can take pictures with confidence

So here’s a handy rule to prevent camera shake. It’s called the ‘one over’ or reciprocal rule. And it’s very simple.

Don’t shoot at a shutter speed less than the reciprocal of focal length of your lens.

For example:

100 mm lens = not slower than 1/100
200 mm lens = not slower than 1/200
80 mm lens = not slower than 1/80

What if you have a 50mm or 35mm lens? Then we go back to the rule where we don’t shoot handheld at speeds below 1/60.

Check out this handy guide below!

However, the above is only for shutter speed to freeze a motion. Some photographers may need to create a motion effect like below:

But to help you out until that happens, I’ve put together a cheat sheet to help you select the right shutter speed when you’re on a shoot.

Written by Collin Smith @ remotes.works Holborn London