Shutter speed might just be the easiest component of the exposure triangle to get your head around: speed it up to freeze movement, slow it down to blur movement. But I’ve judged hundreds of thousands of images in photography competitions and I’ve concluded that camera shake is the number one mistake that both beginner and intermediate photographers are making. And while keeping tabs on your ISO and understanding the reciprocal rule will certainly help, I think ISO and Instagram inadvertently share a good portion of the blame.
Well, I say ISO is to blame, but what I really mean is the way we talk about ISO. And I’m guilty as charged. You see, we put so much emphasis on image quality and reducing noise that I think many photographers feel like they have to avoid noise at all costs. And a byproduct of this is unwanted camera shake. Somewhere along the way we’ve become more accustomed to capturing camera shake than noise, when really, it should be the other way around.
