Shutter Speed to Freeze the Breeze

Hi

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Over the last couple of weekends, I've taken my camera outdoors to take a few landscape shots. A few scenes have had long grasses in the foreground, and some have had trees somewhere in the picture.

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In the past, I've always set the necessary f-stop to get sufficient depth of field, trying to work within the 'optimum' range as recommended by the lens manufacturer (around f16-f22 normally). Using Kodak Tri-X that I rate at 100 ISO (for platinum printing), the shutter speed options tend to be fairly long in duration - maybe between half a second and a fifteenth - longer if it's within a dimly-lit building.

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However, I notice that the grass can often be slightly blurred even if there is only a gentle breeze. The last shot I took, everything was calm while I set up, then the sun came out briefly and sent out a beautiful shaft of light - at the same time a breeze came from nowhere.... (Typical LF conditions).

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My question is, what sort of shutter speeds should I be looking at to stop blurring of trees and grass in various levels of breeze? By the way, I live in Scotland in the UK, and light levels on average tend to be quite a low.

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Thanks in advance.

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David Nash

Hi David

I shoot mainly landscape and plants in the mountains of south France

and I experience very often the same conditions as yours as far as

wind is concerned. I probably have more available light than you have

but use Velvia rated at 32 ISO.

My feeling is that at 1/30s I am almost perfectly safe. At 1/15s I

only need to wait for grass to slow down a bit. At 1/8s I need to

become patient and wait that most of the vegetation stopped to move.

At 1/4s and slower speeds I have to wait for "everything" being

perfectly still. In some cases switching to E100S (rated at 80 ISO)

have made the shot possible.

Oh, by the way, a foreground of grass blurred by wind can make a much

nicer shot than one with everything still/sharp!

What shutter speed to use differs with different focal lengths and/or

distance from the subject. What I might recommend is trying to do this

early in the morning when solar activity hasn't yet had a chance to

stir things up. Sometimes late in the day works too. I just made a 1

minute 10 second exposure of a Hemlock branch hanging over a little

water fall and there wasn't a hint of movement in the Hemlock needles!

I shot that subject after the sun had just about disappeared!

David, I've spent hours waiting for things to "settle down" so I

could make a long exposure without the breeze moving things around,

sometimes in vain. Since I assume that you are using the fastest

shutter speed possible for the image you wish to make in those

conditions, I won't tell you to use a faster one. A couple of tricks

might be helpful however. If there is only one swaying branch/twig,

sometimes you can prop it a bit or tie it back to stop the movement.

If the wind stops occasionally, but not long enough for your exposure

(and assuming everything returns to its rest position) you can use

intermittent exposures. I've made five minute exposures with no

movement visible in groups of small exposures (5-30 seconds each),

capping the lens whenever the least hint of wind starts up, and

waiting it out. Somtimes it can take quite a while to get the whole

exposure made. If your subject only moves occasionally, sometimes a

really long exposure (20 minutes or more) will effectively stop the

motion since the movement is such a small proportion of the total

exposure time it becomes invisible. Sometimes you just have to give

up! Regards, ;^D)

I don't know about you, but sometimes I rather like the effect

created by the wind blowing the grass around during an exposure.

Sure, it's kind of annoying when you try to take a picture of a nice

big majestic tree against some beautiful horizon and have the wind

blowing to a degree that instead of a tree you'll get a nice big

majestic blurry blob, but wind-induced subject movement need not

always be considered a bad thing. As for solving your problem, about

all I can think of to suggest would be to maybe shoot your Tri-X at a

little higher EI. It would give you faster shutter speeds, and since

you're shooting LF, I don't think you'd really have to worry about a

loss in image quality.

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Just a thought...

Have you tried this method; instead of an exposure of say 1sec @f16,

try twenty five at 1/25 sec @f16. It does freeze movement, and if

conditions are just right it can also suggest movement slightly, even

occasionally a slight 'kind of 3D' effect. I have tried this, and

for the most part it worked well(around Fife anyway). Or there is an

alternative, however you may not be happy with it - try a faster film

such as HP5 for anywhere between 12 and 18 minutes, depending on your

preference (and the conditions in which it was taken), in Ilfospeed

print dev diluted 1-100.

BTW I too live in Scotland and am quite happy using a more grainy

film - as can be seen by my 35mm shots of Soulgreed at

www.soulgreed.com/band.htm or /gigs.htm.

I wonder if you could rate the Tri-x higher than EI 100. I have not

made platinum prints, but I have made POP prints, which are said to

use the same type of negatives. I was told that POP prints needed

dense negatives, 1 stop or more exposure than normal. I experimented

with the paper using step-wedges and real pictures, and I found that

the POP paper did not require any more exposure than what was

required to get .10 negative density for zone I. The paper did

require a lot more contrast, however. My normal EI for POP paper is

actually 2/3 stop less than my normal EI for conventional paper,

because the higher contrast required for POP (N-2 development) pushes

up the EI of the film along with the contrast.

Since wind is such a problem and small apetures a must why is the

fastes film in sheets 400? Shooting 400 speed film and making very

modest enlargements the grain is very fine i cant imagine it would

increase that much with say tmax 3200 (rated at 800 or 1000).-J