Tuesday Tip #2

5 Reasons to USE a TRIPOD!!!!!!

I have to always remind myself that as much as I like to hold my camera that a tripod is pretty much never the wrong choice.

1) Image stabilization
Large lenses do better on a tripod. They are physically harder to hold still and heavier, plus when you are using a telephoto lens zoomed in small movements a the camera equal much larger movements in the image being captured so if you can stabilize with a mono or tripod. 

2) Low light/ Long Shutter speeds
A good rule of thumb is anytime your shutter speed is equal to or less than your focal length -get out the tripod. (ex. 300m < 1/300 or 200mm < 1/200.) I'll be honest though I often go by feel, if I can hear the distinct sound of both the open and the close of my shutter I'm going to be taking my tripod out but I should likely take it out sooner..

3) Nighttime and Sunsets
This is kind of just an extreme condition of #2. So it's kind of obvious that the available lighting is reduced and so to get more light into the lens, you need to adjust exposure and shutter speed or maybe your camera has a Night setting. I find that sunsets can be photographed without a tripod but you can easily lose the vibrant colors and the fine details in the clouds without even releasing it.

4) HDR (High Dynamic Range)
More honesty. I'm not really into HDR. I know how to do it and yes it looks cool when others do it but yeah it's just not my thing. Anyway if life under your rock is cozy this is how it works you set your camera to bracket exposures. Bracketing exposures create images that are + n f stops from the original setting and -n f stop from the original setting you could use as little as 3 images or really as many as you could handle. Other than HDR this technique is helpful to make sure you captured the image perfectly. Without a tripod you'd have issue lining up the images once combined and you'd get more blurring than desirable.

5) Photoshop Awesomeness
I'm apparently feeling like telling you my entire list of secrets today! In my photography this is actually the Number 1 reason I pull out my tripod. I always try to use a tripod when photographing young kids in a group. Inevitably I have to take two images and swap some faces to get everyone looking and smiling. I have also often planned an image that would stitch together aspect of several images. Using a tripod makes those quick switches SOO much easier.

What reason have you grabbing for your 3 legged friends? Leave a comment!  
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