What camera settings should I use for photos taken from a moving car?
Asked 4/12/2013
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I’m having trouble getting sharp photos while riding in a car traveling about 75–95 mph. Is there a good rule for choosing shutter speed based on vehicle speed, or does it depend on the subject? I’d like advice on shutter speed and any other useful settings or techniques for shooting from a moving vehicle.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
7
This is a bit of a tough question, as it depends on several factors. I would in fact say that there is no possible general answer to this question.
When moving at typical vehicular speeds, the shutter speed is selected to stop motion, in this case, the photographer's motion. When you're moving at these speeds, objects closer to you appear to be moving faster than further away objects. This phenomenon is known as parallax. In addition, it would depend on whether the objects are moving to your side (like the landscape), or are more or less moving towards you (like cars in front of you).
In addition, the higher your camera's resolution, the more noticeable shake and/or motion blur will be when viewing the image at full resolution. However, for a print of a given size, shake and/or motion blur should be the same regardless of sensor resolution.
It is possible to trigonometrically calculate the apparent motion of an object at a given distance and thereby select the shutter speed based on the acceptable amount of motion blur for a given photograph, but given that you're probably going to be well past the object by the time you finish calculating, there isn't a lot of point.
So in conclusion, for close or medium distance objects, I'd try to take photos with high (1/500 seconds or less) shutter speeds and keep going higher or lower till you find an acceptable setting. For far away objects, you can go pretty low, possibly all the way down to 1/50 seconds. Eventually, you'll learn to judge the shutter speed fairly accurately depending on your sense of motion; but it will require practice and deliberate experimentation to develop that judgement.
Originally by user1293. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1293
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
There isn’t a simple shutter-speed-to-mph formula. The right setting depends on subject distance, direction of travel, focal length, and how much vibration the car adds.
General advice from the community: use the fastest shutter speed you can, especially for nearby subjects or longer lenses. A close roadside subject blurs much more quickly than a distant mountain because of relative motion (parallax). Shooting forward at distant subjects is easier than shooting sideways at nearby ones.
Practical tips:
- Raise shutter speed as high as possible; very fast speeds are often needed for sharp shots from a moving car.
- Use continuous/burst mode and take lots of frames to improve your odds.
- If your lens/camera has stabilization, turn it on.
- Wider lenses are easier to handhold than telephoto lenses.
- Distant subjects may be okay at slower speeds, but nearby subjects usually require much faster exposures.
So: don’t base it on mph alone. Base it on subject distance, angle, and focal length, then test and review results.
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