asked on

Camera Shutter Speed and Exposer Time Related to Blur

I'm looking for information that relates camera shutter speed and expose time to blurring at certain altitudes and velocities. I believe shutter speed and exposure time are pretty much inversely proportionate but I'm not sure how to relate blur or how all of this can be predicted at different altitudes and velocities.

Any help would be much appreciated. Help in any form would be good: equation, web reference, code, best guess.....

SOLUTION

Callandor

membership

This solution is only available to members.

To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.

Start Free Trial

potuncle

Shutter speed is the same as exposure time. For example if your shutter speed is 1/500 of a second then the film is being exposed for one 500th of a second. So a shutter speed of 1/1000 would expose the film for half the time of 1/500 and therefore reduce the motion blur by half. Since you mention altitude, I am assuming you are relating this to arial photography. When shooting arial photography there are the following variables:
- Altitude
- Velocity
- Field of View (this is determined by both the focal lenth of the lens and the size of the film)
- Shutter speed

The altitude and field of view determine the amout of area that is being photographed. Trigonomitry can be used to figure out the about of area in the field of view if the field of view is x degrees and the altitude is y meters.

In our example, let's say that the area in the field of view is 1 kilometer. Then, to keep things simple, let's say that our velocity is 1 kilometer a second. From this information we can calculete the amount of motion blur for any particular shutter speed. For example, if our shutter speed is 1/1000 of a second then the blur of our photograph would be one meter, meaning that a point in the landscape that was photographed will blurred 1/1000 of the length of the photograph.

The above may be a bit more complex of an answer that what you are looking for, but with more information, I would be able to answer your question more specific to youro needs.

Jason

gfoote

ASKER

Jason,

So could you say, in the above example, that a blur of 1 meter occurs because in the time it takes for the shutter to open and close once, the field of view has progressed 1 meter on the ground?

If this is the case, then decreasing your field of view by half or doubling the shutter speed, would decreasing the blur to 0.5 meter, correct?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION