Mirror Lock article in Popular Photography!

[jim_hully]

Did anyone read what I thought was quite an astonishing article in the

latest issue of PP? I came away with the impression that using a

tripod is not sufficient to eliminate camera shake when using

telephoto lenses. I have a hard time believing some of the vast

improvements in resolution when the mirror lock-up was employed. I

wonder how this translate to standard to moderate telephotos as well

as to MF in general?

 

Jim Hully

[rick_campbell]

Heck it translates to wide angle lenses. If you take the time to use a tripod, then lock up the mirror! Unless your subject is moving, and then I doubt you'd be using a tripod. (Note, all you TLR users can just ignore this and feel smug).

[gene_crumpler6]

It means HIGH shutter speeds with SLR MF cameras! It takes 1/500+ with my 200mm on the p67 hand held to get a passable 16x20 print! In fact 16x20 prints with Tech Pan using my 80-200 f2.8 on a nikon looks almost as good.

 

I can't even get sharp 16x20's with my C33 hand held at 1/125 and the 80mm lens.

[rolland_elliott]

It seems to me that everyone is going about medium and largeformat work the wrong way. Theoretically with a larger negative you should be able to handhold the camera more (since the negative needs less enlargement for any given picture size) and still get sharp photos. However most people do just the opposite and start using tripods religiously as soon as they grow out of 35mm photography.

 

On the otherhand I think the biggest advantage of Medium Format photography is that you can be sloppier and still get pretty good results. That's right, you can be sloppy. Use slow shutter speeds and hold your breath. OK, it won't work all the time, but I for one think medium format handheld is much more forgiving than 35mm handheld. Is any one else sloppy like me, or are you all a bunch of perfectionists with Mirror Lock Up and fifty pound tripods, who read technical articals about sharpness all day long.

[rick_campbell]

Rolland,

 

Just had to add more. I know the original question is about sharpness but, to me, it's more a question of depth of field. I can get more on a tripod, and as long as it's on the tripod anyway, why not lock up the mirror?

 

I took a photo trip to Japan last year and took almost all hand held shots, it being hard to drag a tripod through the crowds. I got some good shots handheld but almost everyone of them would have been better with more depth of field.

 

Also, to take your bait, when you go to the expense and trouble to use medium or large format it's usually because your photography has become more important to you. That's why, I think, you take more time and use a tripod more. I don't think it's about reading technical articles and being obsessive. You can just get much richer pictures than with 35mm so why not maximize the quality as much as possible?

 

If your answer was tongue in cheek, I'll consider myself suckered ;-)

[cowan stark]

This got hashed out in the Original Q&A forum recently. One issue was why on earth did they do the test with the lens they did-Sigma 170-500 I think it was, instead of a decent quality set of similarly sized prime lenses. I guess you could say that if the differences were that noticable with that lens, they would be really obvious with a non-third party lens. Who knows, but I think it's a flaw in an otherwise unusually thoughtful article for PP.

 

I'm new to MF, just got a P67 recently with 55 and 135mm lenses and I'm leaning towards using MLU always when I'm using a tripod at any shutter speed. In 35 mm, I've always found that using MLU (actually mirror "pre-fire" in EOS-speak, not true MLU) was always an advantage with teles as long as the subject was staying put.

 

I guess my point is that if you're going to go to the trouble of setting up a shot on a tripod after lugging your MF gear to that scenic vista, swattin' away the bugs, how much trouble is it to push the MLU button?! It's actually much easier on the P67, than on my EOS-there's all that LCD display and custom function stuff to mess with.

[djphoto]

You were right the first time, Roland.

[colm boran]

The other reason many people lock up the mirror with MF cameras is

because the mirror is so much bigger (than 35mm mirrors), that it

creates more vibration when it is brought to an abrupt halt at the

end of its travel. If you want to see an excellent example of how

much mirror lock up can make a difference (this time with prime

lenses), check out Ernst Wildi's book: The Medium Format Advantage.

He shows two enlargements side by side taken with a Hasselblad with

a Zeiss lens, both mounted on a very heavy tripod, taken with a cable release. One shot was with the mirror locked up, the other without.

The difference is not so noticeable in small enlargements, but the

difference is incredible at around 10X magnification.

 

Admittedly, Wildi only shows the results of a Hasselblad which may or

may not have more vibration than other cameras. And, he only shows

the difference at one shutter speed (not mentioned in the book). So

he probably chose the worst-case shutter speed he could find to prove

the point.

 

Regarding lugging around a heavy tripod ... it is true that a tripod

with higher mass will reduce the amplitude of the vibration caused by

the mirror/shutter. But there's a much simpler way to create a heavy

tripod without lugging around big tripods or bags of sand, etc. For

shutter speeds faster than 1 second, you can use a pretty flimsy

tripod and simply push it down hard into the ground as you fire the

shutter. If your careful and concentrate on not moving your body,

you can get some excellent results. Your body weight adds the extra

mass and it's a lot easier to carry around!

 

I carry a lightweight tripod that fits into my carry on bag when I

fly to Europe and I have made enlargements up to 20x24" with this

rig/technique (along with my mirror locked up). Many of the shots

were at 1/4 to 1/30 of a second. It would be harder to imagine a

sharper print.

 

If you doubt this technique, try it for yourself. Take some test

shots of something like a brick wall from a long distance (so that is

doesn't take up the whole frame). Take several shots at various

shutter speeds with your heavy tripod and then take some on a flimsy

tripod where you push down hard on the camera body or tripod head

while firing the shutter. Then have the very small section of the

negative enlarged to 4x6, 5x7, etc. (whatever's convenient/cheap).

This test may make you seriously question ever carrying around a

heavy tripod on a trip again!

[dave_wilson1]

Jim, on top of that, if I don't use careful cable release technique with my Haselblad and 180mm lens, the mirror lockup is defeated. Add to that the big airplanes I have near me,living 10 miles from a major airport. They can send vibrations through everything if flying low. However, most of the time I shoot hand held because I need to catch the moment and loose the sharpness anyhow, but it's nice to know it's there when you need it and how to manage it.

[john_hicks___]

Bert Keppler proved two things:

He couldn't read an instruction book to find out how to use the mirror pre-release on an Olympus camera, a camera that's been in production and common use a long time.

But most important, he showed that a dinky tripod is fairly useless.

[jim_chow]

Colm has a point. Often, for shots on top of buildings that have that mesh fence to prevent people from jumping, you can't open the legs fully, which sacrifices stability. Then add to that wind, mirror bounce, etc, and there are a lot of factors against getting a good shot. The easy way is to grasp the tripod where the legs meet and push down a little. As one's body is mostly water, it not only adds extra stability, but also helps absorb vibrations. Still, I bring the heaviest tripod feasible (depends on how much walking is required).

There is an article on photo.net that shows a graph of the vibration dampening vs. time (http://www.photo.net/photo/nature/mlu.html). The conclusion is if the shutter speed is in the 1/60 to 1/2 sec interval, you need MLU. If it's fast, like 1/500 sec, the speed is a fraction of the vibration oscillations, and if it's slow, the oscillation period is a fraction of the total shutter time, so either case doesn't matter as much.

 

BTW, I live in Japan, and usually use a big gitzo 410 despite the crowds (it is difficult to ride my road bike on the narrow streets w/ the 410, though). In touristy Kamakura where I live, I always see Japanese tourists carrying tripods...even for APS P&S's. :-) There are really no tripod/photo restrictions in this town (there are in Nara/Kyoto, though). If you wield a MF camera w/ big lenses and a mammoth tripod, someone will just be awed at your equipment, as if you were driving an exotic Euro sports car. :-) Bring the tripod, use the mirror LU, and get the most from your MF system!

[peter_hughes]

Funny, but after not reading a Pop Photo in, maybe, twenty-five years, I stumbled upon the mirror lock-up article by accident one day while killing time in the local library. It confirmed everything I already suspected. But the most interesting thing about it to me was that Nikon and the other major manufacturers would dare make a so-called "pro" SLR (such as the new F100) without MLU! Of course, that's just a marketing ploy to make you buy their top-of-the-line. As far as I'm concerned, it's a "must" feature; I would never buy an SLR without it.

 

Note that I always use MLU if I possibly can, unless I'm handheld, shooting with flash, or if a bit of motion is what I'm going for.

 

http://www.ravenvision.com/rvapeter.htm

[azrul_abdullah]

Just a minor deviation. If you are planning to do tight macro photography with magnifications of 1:2 or 1:1 or larger, the MLU is essential. As one of the posting earlier mentioned, if you can do a MLU to get the best sharpness and if the subject is fairly stationary, why not. I also agree that MF cameras use larger mirrors and they do bounce more than 35mm cameras. I shot some chromes some time back with a MF SLR and a monopod at a shutter speed of 1/125 and found that under a high magnification loupe, there was still some mild blur in the background (no MLU). Just as MF can accentuate the quality of the lens, it can also accentuate camera shake and poor focusing.

 

Always keep a tripod handy.