mirror lock-up

[Dan Cook]

Is it worthwhile to do shoot storm stills with this activated? Since you have to hit the shutter button twice it seems like an unnecessary step to me.

 

[John Diel]

Not so much for daylight, twilight storms. However, lightning it may be worth while. I've used it more for Meteor showers or something where I had some lighted by a flash in the foreground and long exposure to minimize the shake.

Night time storms, and evening exposures over 1/30 of a second, your going to get the storm moving anyway, so motion blur is a given.

It's really for very long exposures where you don't want ANY motion shake or blur at all and usuallu used on still subjects

John Diel

 

[Ryan McGinnis]

Is it worthwhile to do shoot storm stills with this activated? Since you have to hit the shutter button twice it seems like an unnecessary step to me.

Mirror lockup is for longer exposure images when the camera is tripoded (and also usually cable released.) The idea is the minimize the small amount of camera vibration caused by the mirror slapping into the up position to give the sensor a line of sight through the lens. If you're handholding, mirror lockup makes little sense, since the vibration of the mirror slap will be almost nothing compared to the the vibration caused by the muscles in your hands and arms shaking.

 

[Brett Roberts]

I've actually read that MLU is most beneficial for tripoded exposures that are between, say, ~1/30 sec. and 2 sec., and this makes sense to me. If you're doing a truly long exposure (> 10 sec.) in the dark, the effects of any mirror vibration should only be a factor for the first couple seconds of the exposure, proving negligible in the big picture. On the other hand, low-light exposures that are long enough to require a tripod, but not more than a couple seconds, could be detrimentally affected for their entire duration.

Needless to say, though, it can't hurt to use it on longer/nighttime exposures just for comfort.

Personally, I use MLU only occasionally, but primarily for stuff like sunsets, storms in waning light, or tripoded long telephoto shots with marginal exposure times.

 

[Scott Taylor]

I've actually read that MLU is most beneficial for tripoded exposures that are between, say, ~1/30 sec. and 2 sec., and this makes sense to me. If you're doing a truly long exposure (> 10 sec.) in the dark, the effects of any mirror vibration should only be a factor for the first couple seconds of the exposure, proving negligible in the big picture. On the other hand, low-light exposures that are long enough to require a tripod, but not more than a couple seconds, could be detrimentally affected for their entire duration.

Exactly! MLU for night time lightning shots, which are most often done with a wide angle, is going to have virtually zero effect either way.

The most common use for MLU is when shooting telephoto. Even when using a tripod collar with a 300mm f/2.8 or 400mm f/5.6, I can see physical movement across the lens just from the mirror slap alone. This is especially evident when using one or two teleconverters. MLU is extremely beneficial in this scenario.

But again, for night time photography with wide angle lenses, it is typically unnecessary.

Scott