The Sweet spot.

[MorganP]

This is something I’ve been pondering for a while. If you have a sweet spot on your lens aperture f8 –f11 and your ISO sweet spot is under 1200 is there also a sweet spot for shutter speed? If I’m shooting at 1/6400 will the quality of the photo be the same if I was shooting 1/30. Assuming everything is equal and there is no vibration?
If I shoot at 1/30 will my sharp edges start to blur. If I shoot at 1/6400 is that enough time for the sensor to gather the full information about that image.

 

[Squawk]

I think sweet spot really applies to the glass definition and it's usually a couple of stops down from wide open. As the aperture gets smaller there's a danger of scattered light causing softness. F11 seems ambitious to be in that range.
ISO isn't really sweet. The lower it is the more detail you'll capture, so at 100 you can dig out more shadow details than you can using 1000. Also the extent to which a camera can handle it varies and while a D5 will be acceptable at ISO 1200 the D500 would much rather be lower. To me the only sweet ISO is 100, though it's not often practical.
Shutter speed is dependent on subject and technique, so landscape with silky water is slow on a tripod and flying birds hand held is fast. Steve has posted suggestions for speed.
I think if you research diffraction caused by decreased aperture you'll see why it's not really applicable to think of ISO and shutter speed in the same way.

 

[DRwyoming]

This is something I’ve been pondering for a while. If you have a sweet spot on your lens aperture f8 –f11 and your ISO sweet spot is under 1200 is there also a sweet spot for shutter speed? If I’m shooting at 1/6400 will the quality of the photo be the same if I was shooting 1/30. Assuming everything is equal and there is no vibration?
If I shoot at 1/30 will my sharp edges start to blur. If I shoot at 1/6400 is that enough time for the sensor to gather the full information about that image.

Good answer above but FWIW, the concept of a fairly narrow sweet spot really applies to lens sharpness more than the other two things you mentioned.

ISO should generally be set as low as conditions permit but most modern cameras can go several stops above base ISO without noticeable image degradation if that's what it takes in terms of: available light, stopping subject motion, achieving desired DoF or other factors like using a polarizer which costs light.

But shutter speed doesn't really have narrow well defined sweet spot. Sure if you go crazy long with exposures you can run into noise problems but across a pretty wide range of shutter speeds there's not a clear sweet spot the way there is with lens sharpness. Outside of time exposure astro images or the like shutter speed should generally be set for either stopping or intentionally not stopping subject motion as required by the scene such as capturing blur less images of moving wildlife subjects or panning with them with the intent of blurring the background or situations like flowing water where you may want an intentional blur. Modest changes in shutter speed in that situation can help make a shot work or really change it for the worse but absent of minimizing camera motion or stopping (or intentionally blurring) subject motion there's not really a general purpose sweet spot for shutter speed the way there is with lens aperture and sharpness.

 

[Thern]

This is something I’ve been pondering for a while. If you have a sweet spot on your lens aperture f8 –f11 and your ISO sweet spot is under 1200 is there also a sweet spot for shutter

I may read your questions incorrect but like I read your questions you allready know about the limits for aperture and ISO (not so much the sweet spots) and you want to know wether there’s a technical limit regarding shutterspeed being to slow or to fast?
The electronics of the camera together with the firmware is able to catch and read out the sensor at any given shutterspeed the camera is able to operate
So no limits there but the ‘inbuilt’ fastest shutterspeed.
Most cameras do have the possibillity to use a bulb mode for (very) slow shutterspeeds.

If I’m shooting at 1/6400 will the quality of the photo be the same if I was shooting 1/30. Assuming everything is equal and there is no vibration?

Yes the quality will be the same.

 

[MorganP]

Thern, You have read my question correctly. I understand the lens sweet spot. I wish I could set my IOS at 64 or 100 always. I'm trying to determine what affect shutter speed has on photo quality.
Someone mentioned that at lower Sutter speeds you will have a larger dynamic range, or will be able to pull more details out of darker areas. This suggest to me that shutter speed dose chance the photo. I think it come down to setting up an experiment to determine if indeed there are changes and it my very camera to camera.

Thanks for your input.

 

[Palouse]

If you change shutter speed you will have to also change ISO or aperture to compensate. How will you know what caused the change, if there is any?

 

[DRwyoming]

Someone mentioned that at lower Sutter speeds you will have a larger dynamic range, or will be able to pull more details out of darker areas.

That's certainly true when light gathering is an issue such as astrophotography. In more normal daylight photography it would be hard to measure let alone see dynamic range changes based on a wide range of shutter speed changes.

 

[Thern]

Thern, You have read my question correctly. I understand the lens sweet spot. I wish I could set my IOS at 64 or 100 always. I'm trying to determine what affect shutter speed has on photo quality.
Someone mentioned that at lower Sutter speeds you will have a larger dynamic range, or will be able to pull more details out of darker areas. This suggest to me that shutter speed dose chance the photo. I think it come down to setting up an experiment to determine if indeed there are changes and it my very camera to camera.

Thanks for your input.

OK, in the OP you said everything equal so I assumed you were shooting at a shutterspeed of 1/30 and 1/6400 with the same apertures and same ISOs. (Test at noon using 1/6400 and during dusk/dawn at 1/30)
This is a somewhat different question but that’s okay.

Aperture and shutterspeed do not influence dynamic range.
What they can do ,but again that’s not necessairily always the case, is causing the need to crank up ISO.
The ISO sensitivity (irl amplification) causes loss of DR, colors washing out, loss of detail and introduces noise.
There are numerous sites testing sensorperformance so you don’t have to perform that test yourself.

But just remember always try to shoot as neat as possible.
Largest aperture possible
Slowest shutterspeed possible
Resulting in the lowest ISO possible
To make things easier...
Aperture is impacting DOF and based on the quality of the lens it may/will impact IQ since lenses (but the superteles) are not designed to perform best when shot wide open.
Shutterspeed is dictated by the subject (fast) moving or still, your ability to stabilize the rig, absence or presence of optical stabilisation or the effect you want. (Freeze the movement or pan at a lower shutterspeed)

So what I always recommend is to shoot in manual mode with Auto-ISO on. (Ranging from base ISO till the ISO where you feel comfortable with)

One little drwaback (if so) You’ll need a bit of training of muscle memory to find the compensationbutton blindfolded but that’s it.
This way you will always be in complete control and shooting at the lowest possible ISO for that picture at that very moment.