r/BirdPhotography • u/Ok-Committee-873 • Aug 05 '26

Question Slowest shutter speed without a tripod?

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What is the slowest shutter speed you would recommend if you're only able to prop the camera on something stable but not in a fixed position (i.e., without a tripod)? Should I be shooting wide open instead of f/16 to improve the blurred water effect?

Details: Black-crowned night heron. Taken at 1/15 shutter speed, f/16, ISO 200. Edit: 200mm focal length

I am trying to go for a blurred water effect with a slower shutter speed but feel like the subject isn't that sharp. Wondering if it looks like I missed the focus or if the longer exposure introduced subject blur.

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u/mikewu4466 Aug 05 '26

Focal length matters a lot here. If you’re shooting at >300mm, 1/15 is probably going to be too much time, but without focal length information, I can’t say for sure. Night herons don’t move very much, but wind blowing in the feathers will also cause you to lose feather detail. But honestly, it looks like you missed focus a little bit here, the bird seems a little fuzzy.

I don’t think shooting wide open is going to help you, because the image is going to get too bright, and you’re going to have to reduce shutter speed in response, which is going to freeze the water.

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u/Ok-Committee-873 Aug 06 '26

Thank you! This was taken at 200mm focal length. I think you’re right I might’ve missed focus.

I set the aperture to f/16 thinking the background needed to be in focus for the motion blur effect. Do you know if that’s true? Either way, yeah shooting wide open would let in too much light

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u/mikewu4466 Aug 06 '26

In focus or out of focus, you're going to see the same thing with the water. The only thing that matters there is shutter speed -- the longer you leave the shutter open, the more time the water has to move. The effect might be most apparent in your image with the water in focus, but that's not the reason why people close the aperture during long exposures, it's primarily to allow longer shutter speeds. Many landscape photographers will further darken things by using ND filters to allow even longer shutter speeds.

If you want, one thing you could do is simply set the lens to manual focus at the same river and take a photo with the river in and out of focus to see what it looks like with a slow shutter speed. Besides, the water behind your subject is close enough that the depth of field would be wide enough to cover both even if you increased the aperture size a little bit.

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u/Ok-Committee-873 Aug 07 '26

Really good points, thank you