No picture today, just some good old fashioned advice. You’ve already seen what happens when you don’t use a tripod when trying to take sharp photographs, but if you just don’t have a tripod with you, what can you do to minimise shake? Personally, I have about seven ritualistic practices that I follow; their success rates vary from sure fire success to last ditch effort! So in no particular order…
- 1. Sit the camera on a rigid surface.
- Possibly the most obvious practise but often the easiest and most reliable approach is to simply sit your camera on a wall, chair, table or anything rigid. The only problem with this approach is that you are limited in how you can orientate your camera; placing it on a chair will mean you can only shoot straight ahead – no substitute for a tripod with a ball and socket head.
- 2. Hold Your Breath.
- Breathing is necessary but sometimes it gets in the way of a sharp photo – if you are trying to be the tripod then you must make yourself as steady as possible. Taking a deep breath and holding it will reduce your natural tendency to sway (very slightly, but enough to ruin a long exposure shot) as the air enters and leaves your lungs.
- 3. Lean against something.
- Often you can put your arms around a pole, if one is available, and lean one shoulder into it, giving you an anchor to steady yourself with. Kneeling is also a simple and effective way to reduce shake – by lowering your centre of gravity you are less prone to wobble.
- 4. Don’t use the LCD screen, use the view finder instead.
- Although there are arguments for and against using the LCD screen on a camera, for long exposure shots I would say it is definitely a no no. When using the viewfinder you tend to hold your camera away from your body, as much as arms length perhaps. This will simply lead to increased blurring as holding outstretched arms still, even without a camera, is a difficult task. It is better to use the viewfinder and keep the camera in tight to your body – it is much easier to lock your arms steady against your chest.
- 5. Wrap the strap around your elbows.
- What this does is introduce tension in your camera’s strap so the strap is taut, constraining it from moving in at least one direction, relative to your own body. I’ll explain the setup as best I can (I’m assuming you’re right handed and are using a DSLR yes?):
- Hold your camera in front of you, letting the strap hang down.
- Put your right arm through the strap, past the elbow, and bring your hand back out around the outside of the left part of the strap.
- Hold the camera as normal and dig your elbow into the strap.
- Depending on the length of the strap you should be able to increase its tension by tilting your right arm accordingly.
- 6. Open aperture.
- We’re approaching last ditch effort time. Bigger aperture = more light entering your lens but also decreases your depth of field. Make your choice.
- 7. Increase the ISO
- Last ditch effort time (my personal opinion), increasing the ISO will increase your sensor’s sensitivity to light, but also to noise. I hate increasing the ISO on my camera out of some irrational fear that the image will explode in graininess – the D300 is supposed to handle very well at higher ISOs so maybe I should experiment with it a little.
Those are just some of the many possible ways to minimise shake that I use. Are there any more you can think of? Do you stabilize your camera in other ways?
Technorati Tags: tripod, camera, sharp photo, long exposure, viewfinder
