• site home
  • blog home
  • galleries
  • contact
  • underwater
  • the bleeding edge

the last word

Photography meets digital computer technology. Photography wins -- most of the time.

You are here: Home / The Last Word / Taming the Sony a7R shutter

Taming the Sony a7R shutter

January 18, 2014 JimK 5 Comments

The is a guest post by Huntington Witherill, a prolific, versatile  photographer who has mastered both the technical and artistic parts of the pursuit. He’s also a great lecturer, teacher, and friend. You can see his work here. He’s been working on the a7R shutter slap for a couple of weeks now, and he’s come up with something that looks very promising.

Take it away, Huntington:

I’ve been reading, with interest, a number of web and blog posts by Joseph Holmes, Mike Schultz, Jim Kasson, and others in relation to the Sony A7r “shutter vibration” problem. (And in particularly, I’m most interested in the A7r shutter vibration issue as it relates to the use of longer lenses.)

I have no doubt that the A7r shutter vibration problem is indeed a reality. The problem itself has been more than adequately demonstrated to me. At the same time, I also know that, in most instances, motion blur in a picture arises as a direct result of physical movement of the camera, the lens (or both) during the moment of exposure. Thus, it stands to reason that a significant contributing factor (in most images that display motion blur) will likely originate with that physical movement.

The Sony A7r allows for 14.4x magnification of the focus point when using manual focusing. This is a feature that I’d not previously experienced with my older cameras. When I started to use this feature, I was amazed to see (so clearly and graphically!) just how much movement the act of hand focusing a lens can cause to the camera (and the lens) despite the fact that they have been  mounted to a sturdy tripod. At 14.4x magnification, the image (in the viewfinder) can be seen to literally jump and vibrate all over the place when the camera (or lens) are the least bit disturbed! And, in fact, even slightly tapping the camera (or lens) produces clear evidence of the effect.

When a camera is mounted to a tripod at only one point — regardless of how sturdy that tripod is and also, regardless of whether the camera is mounted via the solid base of the camera body itself, or via a lens collar or lens “foot” (to help balance the weight of a longer lens, for example) you might be quite surprised (as I was) at just how much potential for camera and lens movement still exists, despite the fact that the camera (or lens) has been firmly affixed to a good solid tripod and properly tightened down. There seems to be a sort of “cantilever” effect (regardless of whether the camera or lens are used as the attachment point) that presents too many opportunities for the camera and lens to “flex” thereby introducing easily induced vibration and movement.

To help alleviate the above described potential problems, I’ve come up with what may be a relatively easy (though admittedly a bit kludgy) fix that can greatly reduce the potential for camera and lens movement (when using a tripod) and specifically, when using longer lenses with the Sony A7r camera. The fix allows for the camera and lens combination to be supported at two (2) specific points, rather than just one. The two-point mounting system can alleviate the “cantilever” effect and significantly reduce the potential for camera and lens movement during exposure.

HW oall

BTW, I use Really Right Stuff for most all of my camera/tripod connections. Thus, the fix I’m going to suggest is based upon the use of RRS products. (Though likely, other manufactured product solutions could be concocted.)

First, I attached a small “Tie-Wrap” (small enough to fit through the eye-hole of the camera strap ring attachment point) and I cinched the tie-wrap as tightly as possible. The RRS: “BA7-L Set” fits to the base of the camera quite nicely. But, there is a fair amount of “flex” to the vertical part of the “L” which makes mounting the camera (to the tripod) in a vertical orientation, particularly unsteady and prone to vibration. By simply attaching and cinching down the tie-wrap, the bracket becomes equally stiff and solid in both horizontal and vertical orientations.

tiewrap

Next, I mount the base of the camera (to which I have an attached RRS: “BA7- L Set”) to an RRS: “MPR CL II Rail” (which has, itself, been mounted to an RRS: “B2 LLR II clamp” that is a permanent part of my RRS Ball-Head).

Lastly, I use a custom manufactured small wedge of hardwood which has been slightly angled along both the horizontal and vertical axis (thereby accommodating the differences in the distance between the bottom of the lens barrel, and the top surface of the MPR CL II Rail, when mounting the camera either horizontally, or vertically). The wooden “wedge” is simply slipped into place to make a solid connection (to provide support) between the lens barrel and the top surface of the MPR CL II Rail. (BTW, one needn’t “jam” the wedge into place. It takes but a small bit of pressure to cause the camera and lens to then be fully and firmly supported at two (2) separate points. I’ve found that this simple arrangement eliminates better than 95% of the potential camera movement, in both horizontal and vertical orientations. And, it’s reasonably quick to set up as that special light is fading and the moon is rising!

horizontal

And BTW, you can check the solidity of the fix by mounting the camera in most any “normal” configuration (either using just a lens collar attachment foot, or just a Metabones adaptor foot, or just using the RRS L-plate attachment). Once the camera and lens are attached in a (more normal) single point configuration, zoom in using the magnified manual focus feature and gently tap either the camera or the lens. Note the amount of movement that you will see in the viewfinder. (And of course, using longer lenses and/or closer focus points will serve to magnify the movement.) Now, do the same thing using the two-point mounting system (as described above) and note that the camera and lens movement has been significantly reduced using the two-point mounting system. (And yes, if you give the camera or lens a good smacking with the two-point mounting system, you’ll of course see movement.)

vertical

One of the nice things about this solution is that it can be used with virtually any lens. I’ve set it up to work with my Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM lens. But, with the adaptation of different sized wood wedges, one could use the same setup for virtually any lens.

If you already have an RRS rail (and of course, you’re using RRS connections) you’re good to go. All you need do is craft a small wedge of wood. (Took me all of 5-minutes).

As I said, it looks a bit kludgy, but it really adds (significantly) to the overall stability of the camera and lens when used on a tripod.

Huntington Witherill

The Last Word

← Photographic quality Looking back – and forward →

Comments

  1. Herb Sennet says

    January 18, 2014 at 9:14 pm

    Thank you for the nice and clear post. Lloyd Chambers showed almost the same “solution”. I certainly believe that the results can be improved by this setup. And I also wonder why nobody is showing/using the “official” RRS long lens support package. On the other hand my intuition says that we probably shift the vibrating frequency upwards which might pop up again at higher shutter speeds. Jim has to come to help again to proof if assumptions are right here.

    Reply
  2. Ferrell McCollough says

    January 19, 2014 at 6:36 am

    Simple and effective!

    Reply
  3. Bob Abela says

    April 4, 2014 at 10:39 pm

    Thank you for this, very informative. I’ll give some thought and perhaps think of a less “kludgy” scheme.

    Reply
  4. Scott McAlpine says

    June 19, 2016 at 8:48 am

    It works for me. I previously had all the parts necessary and finally decided to test the “fix” on my Sony 70-200 f/4. (w/ a7r) The before and after results are astounding resulting in mostly tack sharp pictures w/ a few just being sharp. I’ll try the method next on my Sigma 150 f/2.8 and close up photography. Any way, my 70-200 problems are solved. Thanks for posting and thanks to Huntington Witherill.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Sony A7R, Canon 17 TS-E and Iridient Developer | Massimo Cristaldi says:
    February 5, 2018 at 4:52 am

    […] Many, with Lloyd Chambers, found that the camera suffers from vibrations induced by the (noisy) shutter mechanism. Jim Kasson is studying, with an in-depth series of articles (the last, for today is here), the issue and noted an influence, especially on long lenses, induced by the shutter “slap”. I refer to their websites for further considerations: I can say that in my normal use on tripod I’m always within 50 mm, and, hence, I have NEVER seen a visible effect of this problem on my pictures (also because the problems seems that there are mainly between 1 / 80 sec and 1/125 and then magically disappear on long exposures). It also seems that you can mitigate the effect by using two different anchor points (click here for details on the workaround). […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

May 2025
S M T W T F S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Apr    

Articles

  • About
    • Patents and papers about color
    • Who am I?
  • How to…
    • Backing up photographic images
    • How to change email providers
    • How to shoot slanted edge images for me
  • Lens screening testing
    • Equipment and Software
    • Examples
      • Bad and OK 200-600 at 600
      • Excellent 180-400 zoom
      • Fair 14-30mm zoom
      • Good 100-200 mm MF zoom
      • Good 100-400 zoom
      • Good 100mm lens on P1 P45+
      • Good 120mm MF lens
      • Good 18mm FF lens
      • Good 24-105 mm FF lens
      • Good 24-70 FF zoom
      • Good 35 mm FF lens
      • Good 35-70 MF lens
      • Good 60 mm lens on IQ3-100
      • Good 63 mm MF lens
      • Good 65 mm FF lens
      • Good 85 mm FF lens
      • Good and bad 25mm FF lenses
      • Good zoom at 24 mm
      • Marginal 18mm lens
      • Marginal 35mm FF lens
      • Mildly problematic 55 mm FF lens
      • OK 16-35mm zoom
      • OK 60mm lens on P1 P45+
      • OK Sony 600mm f/4
      • Pretty good 16-35 FF zoom
      • Pretty good 90mm FF lens
      • Problematic 400 mm FF lens
      • Tilted 20 mm f/1.8 FF lens
      • Tilted 30 mm MF lens
      • Tilted 50 mm FF lens
      • Two 15mm FF lenses
    • Found a problem – now what?
    • Goals for this test
    • Minimum target distances
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Printable Siemens Star targets
    • Target size on sensor
      • MFT
      • APS-C
      • Full frame
      • Small medium format
    • Test instructions — postproduction
    • Test instructions — reading the images
    • Test instructions – capture
    • Theory of the test
    • What’s wrong with conventional lens screening?
  • Previsualization heresy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Recommended photographic web sites
  • Using in-camera histograms for ETTR
    • Acknowledgments
    • Why ETTR?
    • Normal in-camera histograms
    • Image processing for in-camera histograms
    • Making the in-camera histogram closely represent the raw histogram
    • Shortcuts to UniWB
    • Preparing for monitor-based UniWB
    • A one-step UniWB procedure
    • The math behind the one-step method
    • Iteration using Newton’s Method

Category List

Recent Comments

  • bob lozano on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • DC Wedding Photographer on Goldilocks and the three flashes
  • Wedding Photographer in DC on The 16-Bit Fallacy: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Medium Format Cameras
  • JimK on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • Renjie Zhu on Fujifilm GFX 100S II precision
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • Ivo de Man on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF
  • JimK on Fuji 20-35/4 landscape field curvature at 23mm vs 23/4 GF

Archives

Copyright © 2025 · Daily Dish Pro On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright Jim Kasson.