Practical Photography

This weeks photography tip is the use of tripods, this may seem a very basic thing to comment on as tripods just hold a camera up don’t they? Alot of Photographers these days feel they don’t need a Tripod as their camera or their lens has image stabilization. Image stabilization is great as it will help you to shoot in lower light conditions with slower shutter speeds. New digital cameras often advertise a 2 to 4 stop advantage. This can give you at least a 1 to 2 stop advantage, so you will be able to use a longer lens at 1/125 second rather than 1/400 second.

This is all great but image stablization will not enable you to get low enough shutter speeds to add creativity and your own signature stamp to your photos. By using a 1/15 or 1/30 a second, you can achieve a good blur effect water or action shots, but if you can use a lower shutter speed you can add to the depth of field giving the whole composition a lot more detail. You cannot do this effectively using even the best image stabilizers on the market so to achieve these results I wold certainly reccomend going back to basics and using a tripod.

A tripod can help you compose your imagemore effectively if you place the camera on the tripod, you will have much more control over your composition and it is very easy to make subtle alterations. This works best for landscape, posed compositions and macro photography. To be Honest I wuld rarely try macro photography without a tripod as it is very hard to get right. Also by taking the time to use a tripod you slow down the whole process of taking the picture giving you more time to adjust shutter speeds etc and more time helps you think about the best image you can produce.