The End-of-Summer Photo Sharpness Test

Before summer officially comes to an end, here’s a quick photography challenge you can try today.

I call it the End-of-Summer Sharpness Test.

Find a stationary subject with plenty of fine detail—a tree, building, sign, fence, or anything else that will make sharpness easy to judge.

Photo captured by Chris Leipelt

Now photograph it handheld using the same focal length at:

1/30 sec
1/60 sec
1/125 sec
1/250 sec

Adjust your ISO as necessary to keep the exposure roughly the same.

Then comes the important part:

Pull the photos up on a larger screen and view each one at 100%.

You might be surprised by what you see.

The 1/30-second shot may look perfectly fine on your camera’s LCD but show obvious camera shake when enlarged. At 1/60, things might improve. At 1/125 or 1/250, fine details may suddenly become noticeably crisper.

You’re essentially discovering your personal handheld shutter-speed limit.

And that limit won’t always match the old “1/focal length” rule. Your camera, lens, image stabilization, shooting technique, focal length—and even how steady you happen to be that day—all play a role.

Try the experiment again with a longer lens and you’ll probably see the difference even more dramatically.

📸 One Last Summer Sale

Since today marks the last day of summer, we’re also bringing back one of our most popular photography deals:

The Tack Sharp Photography Guide SALE is back for one final day.

👉 Get the Tack Sharp Photography Guide Here

The guide dives much deeper into shutter speed, autofocus, critical focus, camera shake, lens sharpness, aperture, stabilization, sharpening and the other small details that separate a photo that looks sharp on your camera from one that’s genuinely tack sharp.

But we’re only bringing the sale back for the last day of summer.