When I experienced camera shake when using the GFX 100s mechanical shutter on the 250mm lens, I decided to check to see if the other shutter types (ES, EFe Front Curtain Shutter, and EF+Ee Front Plus Electronic) also could create visible camera shake in certain conditions. Let me state that I am by no means a technical guru and I am sure many of you can see things that I cannot. But, here is what I found. Under certain shutter speeds and focal lengths, camera shake will be noticeable using the Efe Front Curtain Shutter and the EF+Ee Front Plus Electronic Shutter. In my scenario. it appears the EF modes use the same shutter type. No camera shake is evident in the ES shutter.
I was shooting at shutter speeds around 1/4, 1/5, etc. on a tripod. I didn’t test to see what range of shutter speeds were affected. It wasn’t until I added the 1.4x tele-converter to the 250mm that I could easily see the camera shake from the Front Curtain Shutter. What blew my mind is that at these shutter speeds, turning on the image stabilization actually improved the situation greatly. I don’t think many of us would complain between the ES and EF shutters when the Image stabilization is turned on in these situations. Even the mechanical shutter got to be at least decent. Obviously, you don’t want to use image stabilization when on a tripod in most other cases.
I suspect this has been discussed before here and elsewhere. But, I’m probably like most and don’t go checking historical posts to see what has been discussed. Also, there are new people coming into the system regularly. But, I came home the other day with a blurry mess of pictures. I hope to prevent that from happening to any of you due to this issue. I also realize we are talking about long focal lengths that many may never use. Plus, there are times when an ES may not be the best choice. That is a whole different discussion that I didn’t want to get into.
In another thread I mentioned an old test that I recall from over a decade ago that used DSLRs and compared plain old mechanical shutter, mechanical shutter with mirror lockup, electronic first curtain, and full electronic modes. UnfortunatelyI no longer can find the test and I'm not sure where to look for it, but I distinctly remember the results and the test images that were posted with it.
Mechanical shutter with no lockup showed as much blur under high magnifications as you would expect, given that the flapping mirror has an effect.
It was distinctly better with mirror lockup, but apparently the mechanical shutter still produced some small amount of blur.
It was even better with electronic first curtain, producing images with virtually no vibration blur.
There wasn't any significant difference between mechanical and electronic shutter at the end of the exposure.
That seems different than your result, where something seems to be producing some vibration even when no mechanical shutter is involved at all. The question would seem to be where that vibration is coming from, since the electronic shutter won't produce any physical motion itself.
Possibilities:
Something in your setup is producing an unrelated vibration? Things that come to mind are tripod stability, perhaps your remote release cable is moving the camera a little bit, doing the test in non-still air conditions, a vibration from something else mechanical such as the lens, IBIS itself.
Not sure if it is relevant here, but it is worth checking this at shorter shutter speeds, too. It might seem like the best test would be a very long shutter speeds, but with those the vibration time is a smaller percentage of the overall exposure.
I’ve been saying to leave VR/IS/IBIS turned ON for tripod shooting for more than 5 years. It goes against the early wisdom of MILCs but most modern cameras perform better with it on.
You didn’t mention if you used the self timer or not. Did you?
One more thing with the GFX IBIS -- for whatever reason it seems best when set to "shooting only instead of "continuous." Can't tell you why, but it's evident in the files...
When shooting off a tripod, I tend to leave IBIS on the "shooting only" position, but implement the 2 sec self-timer to allow the cam to settle down after I've pressed the shutter. This seems to work as well as a cable release. As always, this works for me but respect YMMV...
gear-nut wrote:
One more thing with the GFX IBIS -- for whatever reason it seems best when set to "shooting only instead of "continuous." Can't tell you why, but it's evident in the files...
When shooting off a tripod, I tend to leave IBIS on the "shooting only" position, but implement the 2 sec self-timer to allow the cam to settle down after I've pressed the shutter. This seems to work as well as a cable release. As always, this works for me but respect YMMV...
I think a lot of us are used to old-school lens IS systems, where the IS would seemingly try to correct non-existent camera motion when everything was on the tripod. On my FF system with a 100-400mm lens, I sometimes use IS on the tripod in strong winds, where the wind is going to vibrate the system no matter how heavy my tripod is. I can watch the image drift around in the live view display. (I’ll also sometimes lay a hand on the top of the lens in these conditions to damper vibrations…)
My understanding of the “shooting only” mode is that it doesn’t actively correct for vibration prior to the exposure. You might see vibration in the viewfinder, but the IBIS compensates for it when the exposure starts. Have you watched the display with the 2-second timer to see if the image stabilizes there in those two seconds?h
Also trying to make some educated guesses here… I think the function of “letting things settle” was a bit different with lens IS. It was more that we were worried that the relatively large mass of the camera and lens would take some time to “settle” after we potentially induced vibrations by wiggling the release cable or similar… or, in the old days, flipping up the mirror.
I’m fascinated by this particular issue and I look forward to someone figuring out what is going on.
I switched my GFX 100S to ES almost as soon as I got it, and have never taken it off. My use case is a bit different because it rides on the back of an F-Universalis. In that application, it's unusable with any form of mechanical shutter. The F-Universalis magnifies the shutter shake.
Interestingly, I had no issues using the GFX 50R mechanical shutter on the same F-Universalis.
Most folks (including Jim K.) say that ES doesn't incur a hit in dynamic range vs mechanical shutter. I've always heard that ES always comes at a price. I'd like to know more about that.
Let me see if I can answer all the questions. The EFe- Front Curtain Shutter will make a little noise when you shoot. Whereas, the ES-Electronic shutter is totally silent. So, whatever a front curtain shutter is, I suspect that is what causes the vibration.
I basically change the shutter type in the camera. Then I pick up my phone with the Fujifilm app to remotely fire the shutter. Then, the camera waits two seconds before firing. I don’t see any camera shake when using the ES shutter, so I don’t think it is my setup. JIC, I am on an FLM CP34 L4-II with only the two thickest tubes extended. The ballhead is an FLM CB48 FT II. Everything is on wall-to-wall carpet.
Per using IS on a tripod, I think it depends on the shutter speed as to whether you will see a blurry picture. I’m going off of memory here, but try a shutter speed of 3 seconds and see what happens. I use shooting mode only for image stabilization.
Forum GAS wrote:
Let me see if I can answer all the questions. The EFe- Front Curtain Shutter will make a little noise when you shoot. Whereas, the ES-Electronic shutter is totally silent. So, whatever a front curtain shutter is, I suspect that is what causes the vibration.
I basically change the shutter type in the camera. Then I pick up my phone with the Fujifilm app to remotely fire the shutter. Then, the camera waits two seconds before firing. I don’t see any camera shake when using the ES shutter, so I don’t think it is my setup. JIC, I am on an FLM CP34 L4-II with only the two thickest tubes extended. The ballhead is an FLM CB48 FT II. Everything is on wall-to-wall carpet.
Per using IS on a tripod, I think it depends on the shutter speed as to whether you will see a blurry picture. I’m going off of memory here, but try a shutter speed of 3 seconds and see what happens. I use shooting mode only for image stabilization. ...Show more →
If you already understand how mechanical and electronic “curtains” work, you can stop reading right here. :-)
My understanding is that “front curtain shutter” would likely be the same as on manual shutter DSLRs — The “first curtain is a mechanical “curtain” that opens to expose the sensor and the “second curtain” is also a mechanical “curtain” that then covers the sensor to stop the exposure. (In the real world, the second curtain follows the first curtain so quickly at fast shutter speeds that the result is a “slit” between the two curtains that moves vertically across the sensor, exposing a (somewhat or very) narrow band of the sensor. (This is the reason that even film DSLRs with curtain shutters will produce distortions of moving subjecfs. It is one of two possible reasons that such distortions can be produced on digital cameras.)
In simple terms, the first curtain opens the shutter and the second curtain shuts it. And, yes, the front curtain shutter does produce some potential vibrations.
With electronic front curtain shutter (EFCS) the exposure no longer begins with the action of a mechanical shutter curtain. On mirrorless cameras (and DSLRs with live view) the sensor is already exposed and picking up image data before you trigger the shutter. So it is possible to begin the exposure electronically by just starting to record sensor data on the already open sensor. The advantage of this is that there is no mechanical shutter at the beginning of the exposure to cause camera vibrations. (The EFCS should produce no vibrations whatsoever, as it doesn’t move anything in the camera. However, if you move the camera in some other way — pushing a shutter button, unsteady support, etc. — those non-shutter things can still create vibrations.)
That “little noise” you hear with electronic front curtain shutter is most likely the mechanical shutter closing at the end of the exposure. (I don’t know the mechanics of your camera, but it could also be the mechanical second curtain getting into position, but that’s not for sure.)
A fully electronic shutter uses no mechanical shutter at all. It starts and ends the exposure electronically, so it causes no mechanical vibration at the start or end of the exposure. In theory that could be better than ending the exposure with the mechanical shutter, all else being equal. However, all else is not equal — without going into all the details.
In addition, the advantage of ending the exposure electronically is limited when it comes to vibration control — as the rear shutter curtain activates to end the exposure, any residual vibrations after its activation have no effect on the image. (Not the case with mechanical front curtain shutter — its vibrations would during the start of the exposure. Counterintuitively, this would be LESS of a problem on a very long exposure than on a short one, since the period fo teh vibration on the long exposure could be a very small percentage of the total exposure time.)
RoamingScott wrote:
I’ve been saying to leave VR/IS/IBIS turned ON for tripod shooting for more than 5 years. It goes against the early wisdom of MILCs but most modern cameras perform better with it on.
You didn’t mention if you used the self timer or not. Did you?
Certainly this may be true of some lens/camera combos but is definitely not a universal truth.
My Tamron 50-400 (E) is visibly blurry when shooting off a tripod with stabilisation enabled on my A7RIV and A7RV. I specifically tested this when I bought it. Actually ruined a few good shots when I switched from handheld to tripod shooting with it and forgot to disable stabilisation, only to get home and find the resulting images blurred
That seems broadly consistent with what I reported from that earlier test of these types of shutter settings (not on GFX). Mechanical shutter creates some vibrations. Electronic first curtain greatly improves the stability. Fully electronic ("front and rear") can produce a bit more improvement.
I suspect that at the 1/30 second shutter speed used in the test the effect will be a bit larger than with much shorter or much longer shutter speeds.
Most folks (including Jim K.) say that ES doesn't incur a hit in dynamic range vs mechanical shutter. I've always heard that ES always comes at a price. I'd like to know more about that.
ES implementation varies greatly across brands and camera models. The Canon R5 I used to own would not shoot 14-bit when using ES regardless of whether it was set to single shot or continuous low/high. Other cameras will shoot ES in 14-bit until you switch to higher speed shooting modes.
Specific to the GFX 100S, the ES readout speed in 14-bit is very slow, but manageable if you hold very still. I can hear a buzzing noise from the sensor during the ES exposure, so I know when it's safe to move on from a shot. However, the readout speed of ES in 16-bit mode is so slow, you better hold yourself as still as a tripod if you don't want to cause rolling shutter distortion of the image. IIRC, IBIS continues to function during the entire ES exposure, but it can't compensate for you dropping the camera to your side before the ES scan has completed.
When using 250mm with and without the 1.4xTC I have found that I need to use 10 second timer or better yet have a remote release. I don't use IBIS when on the tripod, maybe I should try it. I use EFCS.
You don’t want to use IBIS all the time, just when shooting at certain shutter speeds as far as I can tell. If you notice things are blurry out in the field, then either go to full electronic shutter or try IBIS to see if that fixes the issue.
Please explain your first hand experience about when and when not to use IBIS with shutter speed details.
Forum GAS wrote:
You don’t want to use IBIS all the time, just when shooting at certain shutter speeds as far as I can tell. If you notice things are blurry out in the field, then either go to full electronic shutter or try IBIS to see if that fixes the issue.
