Best Practices when using a Tripod

[DREW WILEY]

Someone trying to say they've made successful handheld shots with a 300 mm Canon lens, while I was referring to a 300mm EDIF lens for a Pentax 6X7 is not exactly a fair argument. I'm dealing with the real cannon; you, with a pea shooter which can't even spell the name of the artillery on its label correctly. Unless mirror-lockup is used, when I trip the shutter on that thing, it registers 5.2 on the Richter scale on a seismograph fifty miles away. Birds panic and take flight. FEMA and the National Guard get called.

 

[Pieter12]

Evidence, please.

 

[Pieter12]

Years ago, Barry Thornton in his book Edge of Darkness, did a test with a 35mm camera and 50mm lens, comparing sharpness at different shutter speeds hand held, with a flimsy tripod and with a sturdy one and then the sturdy one using mirror lock-up.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Years ago, Barry Thornton in his book Edge of Darkness, did a test with a 35mm camera and 50mm lens, comparing sharpness at different shutter speeds hand held, with a flimsy tripod and with a sturdy one and then the sturdy one using mirror lock-up.
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The defect is that a flimsy tripod was used. Without a stable tripod, all that is proved is that the tripod was flimsy. BFD! and I do not mean "big first down" either. The proves nothing except that the tester managed to waste both time and money. Try hanging a camera from a string then start the camera swinging back and forth and see what you can get.

When I was a teenager I had a tripod with legs that were so thin they vibrated in a slight wind. The tripod lived out the rest of its life in the trash.

 

[Pieter12]

The defect is that a flimsy tripod was used. Without a stable tripod, all that is proved is that the tripod was flimsy. BFD! and I do not mean "big first down" either. The proves nothing except that the tester managed to waste both time and money. Try hanging a camera from a string then start the camera swinging back and forth and see what you can get.

When I was a teenager I had a tripod with legs that were so thin they vibrated in a slight wind. The tripod lived out the rest of its life in the trash.

It was to illustrate the lack of sharpness hand-held vs a sturdy tripod. And that was with a 50mm lens. Imagine a 300mm lens hand-held.

 

[eli griggs]

They couldn't have been very sharp.

Actually they were very sharp as I had been shooting documentary action shots for years and made good use of the higher F-stops and fast shutter speed as necessary.


Lots of folks shoot action in existing light with longer lenses and get sharp images, without a mono or tripod attached, if you know what your doing, otherwise Sports Illustrated and similar publications would be out of business.

What I do no do is blow up small and medium format images into over sized photographs that are out of reason for their capabilities.

 

[Pieter12]

Usually you see the sports photographers using monopods with long lenses. And now, with image stabilization common, it is easier to get sharp hand-held shots. Plus those digital cameras go up to insane ISO ratings allowing higher shutter speeds.

 

[eli griggs]

Yes, however this is about analog photography, no the digital abilities of today's wonder cameras and, while monopods are useful in action shots within a narrow field of view, when shooting wheeling, diving and hovering beach birds, you have to be your own support.

 

[Pieter12]

The thread is in mixed workflow, and the mention of sports photographers did not specify analog. Once again, I would love to see those sharp 300mm hand-held analog photos.

 

[eli griggs]

I suppose you're correct, this is a hybrid topic.

Good luck getting me to find those old pictures though, I've simply too much clutter in my photo files to go through, no quite fifty years worth, to locate those images.

I think I could offer up some tropical birds on slides, shot with a Vivitar Series One 70 - 210, from 78 - 79, shot on Eniwetok Atoll, but other than what's at hand in my bird shots, all shot on Ektachromes, I just do no know where to find them.

 

[DREW WILEY]

A "sharp" magazine shot might look pretty miserable enlarged much. Heck, I once had a handheld night-time 8 second exposure of a car accident published in a newspaper. A wreck in its own right, but it told the story. What I've done with my own 300 real cannon-barrel, for the Pentax 6x7, is sometimes rest it on a jacket atop a car roof or fence post or boulder, rifle sniper-style, and shoot at a fast enough speed to avoid mirror slap until after the shutter curtain did its thing. That has worked out well in suitable cases. Otherwise, a really seriously built tripod is the only ticket. But on a good vibration-dampening tripod like a big wooden Ries, the greater mass of that big lens itself becomes an actual asset. On a flimsy tripod it would have exactly the opposite effect.

I have a high quality Nikon adapter for it too; and other than the sheer bulk of the whole setup, I suspect I get better results that way than I would with a dedicated Nikon 300 tele. Since only the center of the optic is used, even shooting wide open carries no qualitative penalty (with the EDIF version, that is; the regular Takumar version 300 is not as well corrected).

 

[Sirius Glass]

A "sharp" magazine shot might look pretty miserable enlarged much. Heck, I once had a handheld night-time 8 second exposure of a car accident published in a newspaper. A wreck in its own right, but it told the story. What I've done with my own 300 real cannon-barrel, for the Pentax 6x7, is sometimes rest it on a jacket atop a car roof or fence post or boulder, rifle sniper-style, and shoot at a fast enough speed to avoid mirror slap until after the shutter curtain did its thing. That has worked out well in suitable cases. Otherwise, a really seriously built tripod is the only ticket. But on a good vibration-dampening tripod like a big wooden Ries, the greater mass of that big lens itself becomes an actual asset. On a flimsy tripod it would have exactly the opposite effect.

I have a high quality Nikon adapter for it too; and other than the sheer bulk of the whole setup, I suspect I get better results that way than I would with a dedicated Nikon 300 tele. Since only the center of the optic is used, even shooting wide open carries no qualitative penalty (with the EDIF version, that is; the regular Takumar version 300 is not as well corrected).

There is a difference between hold a 300mm lens on a 35mm camera and a 6x7. I can had hold a 250mm Hasselblad lens shot at 1/500 or 1/250, but I cannot hand hold the 500mm lens on the same camera for the shortest shutter speed of 1/500.

 

[Pieter12]

In my youth, I could hand-hold 1/8 with a 50mm pretty reliable, taking a deep breath and bracing my arms against my body. I can still do 1/15th with a wide lens. But there's no way I could get a sharp shot with a 300mm hand-held less I was shooting at 1/1000. And for medium format I need to double the shutter speed-to-focal length ratio nowadays, but feel more secure with at least a monopod.

 

[Sirius Glass]

In my youth, I could hand-hold 1/8 with a 50mm pretty reliable, taking a deep breath and bracing my arms against my body. I can still do 1/15th with a wide lens. But there's no way I could get a sharp shot with a 300mm hand-held less I was shooting at 1/1000. And for medium format I need to double the shutter speed-to-focal length ratio nowadays, but feel more secure with at least a monopod.

I knew that unless I was braced against a wall or part of a building, I could not shoot 1/8 second with a 50mm lens and would not bother to try, but I can still hand hold a 300mm lens at 1/500 second.

 

[Pieter12]

Not tack sharp, but I believe this one was at 1/8 with no external bracing.