Canon AE-1 - Manual (Page 46)

Overexposure
Warning Marks
Underexposure and
Coupling Range
Warning Lamp
speed when using a standard 50mm lens. For
indoor photography, with no special illumi­
nation, choose 1/30 of a second and 1/60 of a
second in a brightly lit room.
For outdoor photography, select 1/125
second when cloudy and 1/250 second in
sunshine. To take pictures in particularly
bright sunshine such as at a beach in mid­
summer or in snow-covered mountains, use
shutter speeds of 1 /500 sec. or 1 /1000 sec.
The above mentioned shutter speeds
apply when using a standard 50mm lens, but
it is necessary to choose faster shutter speeds
when using lenses of longer focal lengths
because they are more difficult to hold
steady. It is generally said that the shutter
speed figure should be greater than 1 divided
by the focal length of the lens in order to ob­
tain sharp images.
For example, when using a 200mm tele­
photo lens, shutter speed should be faster
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