nhmorgan wrote: Steve Spencer wrote:
Just to be clear, it isn't f/1.4 in daytime. It is f/1.4 in full sun. If you shoot in the shade, in most instances you will not need a faster shutter speed than 1/8000 even at f/1.4. It isn't as though you can't shoot at all in the daytime at f/1.4 unless you have a shutter speed that is faster than 1/8000 or an ND filter. Clouds depending on how thick they are will often be enough as well to lower the light and allow you to lower the shutter speed. Time of day depending on location can also have a pretty big impact. Morning and evening sun in many places is not going to require a shutter speed faster than 1/8000 even with no cloud cover at all. That said full sun can vary in how bright it is (closer to the equator it can be brighter) and targets that are white or highly reflective can require higher shutter speeds. So there are a number of factors determining if 1/8000 will be limiting or not.
Let me giver you a real world example. I clear out my Lightroom catalog weekly, so right now I just have one shoot from last Tuesday that I did for a running store at a track from 6-8pm. It was a sunny day, but that's an evening in the south. This was a small shoot so I only delivered them 230 images. I shot with a Nikon 85mm 1.2, 28mm 1.4, and 200mm f2 that day. Out of the 230 images, 43 of them were at shutter speeds faster than 1/8000. 13 of them were at 1/8000. I was shooting in aperture priority most of the time.
My point: if you like fast primes and like to shoot them wide open for that look, you are going to hit this limit and will need at least a 1-stop ND.
Thanks for this example. It is helpful. Can I ask what camera you were using and the ISO on those shots? I ask because most Nikon cameras have a base ISO of 64, which should get you by the sunny 16 shutter speed a good exposure even with f/1.4 lens at 1/8000. So if you were shooting over 1/8000 and ISO 64 I am wondering why the camera was selecting such a high shutter speed. Maybe all the faster shutter speeds were all with the 85 f/1.2. Then there is the question of what would have happened if you had set the shutter speed to 1/8000 and kept the aperture wide open using manual. Would any important highlights have been blown or would the shots turned out fine just exposed a bit to the right?
It is indeed an interesting real world example. We know that of the 230 images, for just a little more than 80% the camera selected a shutter speed of 1/8000 or less and presumably these turned out ok. What we don't know is in that just less than 20% of shots if the shutter speed maxed out at 1/8000 and the camera was forced to select that shutter speed would the shots have been ruined or even affected much. We all know our cameras have some head room in the highlights and we can at times push them farther than the camera would select for shutter speed. Sometimes we do that intentionally when we shoot in manual mode or use exposure compensation. Sometimes our choice of exposure is even a better choice than the camera makes. It seems likely that you would not have lost all the shots or even had all of them effected in a meaningful way if the camera had a max 1/8000 when the camera picked a higher shutter speed. Just how many would have been affected negatively, however, is probably hard to determine after the fact. It could be sorted out in testing, however. Maybe someone will do that.
For me, it would be a non-issue because I prefer to shoot my f/1.2 and f/1.4 lenses at f/2 when the light is bright. So a lot of this comes down to style and preference for how you shoot. I am not saying that this won't be an issue for anyone. If you shoot f/1.2 and f/1.4 lens wide open in bright light a lot and you don't want to use ND filters it could be an issue for you. I am saying, however, that for me it would never be an issue.
Jul 13, 2026 at 10:09 AM
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