Tripods,Tripods,Tripods
By Tim Sutherland
This month I’m going to preach a little. No, I’m going to preach a LOT. Probably my biggest complaint of my students is unsharp negatives, and I see it in eighty percent of all the negatives they develop. The subsequent prints are less than sharp because the original negative was not in focus.
Why is this? Very simple - they did not use a tripod. It is one of the most useful accessories you can have. Oh, they say they used a tripod but it is not hard to fool me! I actually warn them of this early in class but they still try. I think I finally know the reason - it’s just plain laziness! I have been guilty of it myself though I should know better. So when I try to push my shutter speed just a little past what I KNOW is going to give me a sharp negative, it is because I actually think I’m going to get away with it! But in reality I was simply too lazy to get the tripod out.
The process using a tripod can seem a little extensive: I have to mount my camera on it and put the cable release on it, compose, set the aperture for maximum depth of field and select a very slow shutter speed. All of this would guarantee the sharp negative I want, but at times something makes me not go through the drill. Maybe it was too cold. I remember the night in Paris last January - eight degrees above zero, myself and two girls under the Eiffel tower arguing about taking the time to set the tripods up in order to capture the picture properly. I remember saying that although it may be darned uncomfortable, the chances we would be returning for this beautiful nighttime shot were next to nil. In the end only one of us got the shot! The other two were fuzzy.
I have to admit, it takes real dedication and discipline to go about all the setup to get a perfect shot. Look at it this way, you paid tons of money to get where you are, just take a few minutes and suffer just a bit to get your shot! Have you ever looked through a telescope and tried to hold it steady enough to really study something? Well that’s exactly why you need a tripod. Put that telescope on a tripod and you can read a newspaper from half a mile away. The same thing applies with your camera. You can’t record an image on film that is dancing around in the viewfinder!
There is actually a very simple formula I will share with you. In order to shoot WITHOUT a tripod this is what you need to know. You know the lens on your camera? Many newer cameras have a small zoom lens, usually zooming from about 28 millimeters to about 100 millimeters, meaning that you can zoom from a slight wide angle to a slight telephoto. That’s where the trouble starts. While your wide-angle shots will typically turn out sharp, your telephoto shot on the same roll will be fuzzy. Here is the formula: you MUST set your shutter speed to at LEAST the same as the focal length of the setting on your lens. Sound complicated? Not really. Say you are zoomed out to slight telephoto and your lens telephoto is 100 millimeters. That means you have to use a shutter speed of 100th of a second! If you zoom BACK to wide angle, say 28 millimeters, then you can use a shutter speed of 1/28th of a second (or as most cameras have on the shutter dial 1/30th of a second).
When you have your camera set to take the picture automatically, you MUST take note of the shutter speed it has selected based on the lighting conditions at the time. If you are taking a telephoto shot and the shutter speed is not equal to or faster that your focal length (telephoto setting) then you cannot get a sharp picture and you MUST reset the shutter speed. Think about this for a second. Say you have a 1000- millimeter telephoto lens to take distant shots of wildlife. In order to take a sharp picture with this lens WITHOUT a tripod you would have to set the shutter speed to 1000th of a second! This is nearly impossible even during bright sunny days. Put this camera and lens on a tripod and you can shoot at virtually ANY shutter speed you desire for the effect you want.
OK?
All right, so enough of this. Go out and get yourself a good sturdy tripod and start taking REALLY sharp pictures. Oh, by the way, stay away from those flimsy plastic tripods at around $30.00. Buy the most expensive one you can afford, and while at the store extend the legs, lean on it, and wiggle it. If it bends and wiggles all over the place, don’t buy it!
Good luck!
Till next time…….