Reply To: Depth of field

[sleeping]

There’s an old rule of thumb that the safe speed for handholding = 1/focal length, so at 55mm that would be 1/50 or thereabouts. It really depends on your tolerance for sharpness and how steady your hands are, though.

As you get to that point you can use a camera support or increase the ISO (use faster film, or go into the menus and change the setting on digital) which will allow you to use smaller apertures and/or faster shutter speeds, at the cost of increased noise/grain.

I don’t know if the d100 is the same as the d70, but on the D70 in P mode you can change the combined aperture and shutter speed (keeping the same exposure) using the rear command dial – this makes experimenting with the differences really easy.