Aperture

[Photofarmer]

Brushing up on my skills or lack thereof.

Any of you guys shoot at f22 I rarely go above f13 if so f16 is it.

Referring to day time storm photography in sometimes bright light trying to achieve longer shutter speeds.

I always put on a 3 stop nd other "experts" tell me stop right down and get longer shutter speed that way.

What do you gurus do

 

[jcass]

I'm in the same boat as you and also use an ND filter instead of stopping down into the 20's. I've read that very small apertures lead to diffraction. Some of the folks that shoot macro may have some good wisdom on this topic.

 

[R Burdare]

Brushing up on my skills or lack thereof.

Any of you guys shoot at f22 I rarely go above f13 if so f16 is it.

Referring to day time storm photography in sometimes bright light trying to achieve longer shutter speeds.

I always put on a 3 stop nd other "experts" tell me stop right down and get longer shutter speed that way.

What do you gurus do

What camera are you using ? Diffraction kicks in earlier on APS C cameras so you need to take that into account . So while F16 might be OK on Full frame images on APSC cameras they will look softer .

 

[Photofarmer]

FF R6ii and R5 my old banger RP has been borrowed by daughter will never see it again

 

[R Burdare]

FF R6ii and R5 my old banger RP has been borrowed by daughter will never see it again

My hammer drill suffered the same fate as your RP .Kids who’d be without them

 

[Photofarmer]

My hammer drill suffered the same fate as your RP .Kids who’d be without them

got 5 sure was time in there teens "shit should've worn a condom" all turned out alright aged 33 to 22

 

[R Burdare]

got 5 sure was time in there teens "shit should've worn a condom" all turned out alright aged 33 to 22

 

[TwoWheeler]

Some of the folks that shoot macro may have some good wisdom.

Sorry, I shoot macro, but am a little lacking in the wisdom department.

 

[Chris Summers]

Back in my studio days when I shot large format I had a Goertz 16 1/2" f/9.5 lens that stopped down to f/90! I used to shoot at f/45 but anything smaller was not easy to light.

 

[Archibald]

Diffraction happens, but we rarely see it. It shows up when photographing tiny bugs (couple mm) and then cropping massively to try to make a photo out of it.

You can also see it just by stopping down a lot. Usually you can get away with an effective f/22 on a full frame camera. Narrower than that, and the diffraction softness starts to become significant. It doesn't look the same as a focus problem... it just looks like poor IQ.

We see visible diffraction effects more when doing macro because at higher magnification, the aperture isn't what the camera tells you it is (meaning Canon camera). At a magnification of 1x, the lens is out so far, the aperture looks way smaller to the sensor. The lens might report f/16, but effectively it is f/32. I have heard that Nikon cameras are more honest here and tell you the effective aperture.

Diffraction estimation like this is pretty rough, though. The diffraction effect depends on the optics of the particular lens and cropping too, and how you present your photo.

But you are likely going to be safe shooting regular scenes at f/16 or wider.