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Using Your Body As A Tripod For Hand-Holding Camera Shots

mulester7

mulester7

LIVE from Lake Ouachita
.....what do you Guys do?....elbows against part of the upper body?....a special breathing technique at button pushing time?....by the way, we're talking about an attempt at a shot when the speed is going to be under 1/60th of a second, like 1/15th or 1/8th....any tips for steadiness giving better image quality?.....
 
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If I can I lean against something and that usually works for me, otherwise I tuck my arms in and hold my breath and gently squeeze the shutter release. However, I hardly ever go out without my tripod. You just never know.
 
I find that my steadiness varies somewhat from time to time, but I can take satisfactory pix down to 1/2 second or so with the zoom at wide angle in most cases. Much over that is not succesful for me. Much over a second is usually not good for me. Of course, I'm only talking about a camera with a viewfinder, so it is up to your eye. Doing long hand-held exposures with a camera that has to be held away from you to see the LCD screen is pretty hopeless at slow speeds.

My stance is upper arms against rib cage. The important thing is that every part of your arms and body should be in a position that doesn't give you an urge to change it - arms should not feel too close together or too far apart. Then I practice one or two easy breaths and then hold my breath and press the button. Again, it helps if you feel the amount of air in your lungs is just right, and you don't need to either exhale or inhale.

You want to hold the camera lightly, attempting to tighten up will only make the shakes worse.

Of course, it also helps if you can brace your body against a wall or column or something, but that's often not possible.

Anyhow, the above is what works for me, YMMV.
 
Forgot to mention that more mass makes the camera less shaky. It's such a simple idea, but true - adding a battery grip if it's available for your camera could be one of the easiest improvements in hand-held steadiness.
 
.....good tips all, but some things work for some that don't for others....leaning against something usually works awfully well, like a wall, or street light, or building, your car, or whatever....but when that option is not available, I jab my left elbow just to the left side of the solar plexus, (just below where the bottom rib bones meet in the middle), the right elbow just to the other side of the solar plexus, pushing in also, the left hand holds the bottom of the camera and is by far more of a tripod than the right....the right hand holds the right side of the camera where the controls are, mainly on top, and works the controls.....

.....then, what I do, is keep barely pushing that shutter button to ensure focus as I breath deep and exhale a couple of times....then I inhale full and hold it, while sorta' releasing my shoulders to sit on a beach ball named lungs....I barely push the shutter button one last time holding the focus, and stare at something in the picture while pushing on down with the shutter button, looking for that something stared at to come back....you'd be amazed at some shots you can get under 1/60th with nothing to lean against.....

.....here's some shots from a show one night in a small theater in coastal Mississippi where no flashes were allowed....I was leaning against a large pillar that held up the balcony, or these probably wouldn't have been possible....every one of these shots was at least 1/8 sec with some 1/4 secs mixed in, and you can only hope to get lucky without something to lean against with exposures that long....was using a Canon EOS system at the time....pictures to follow so you can read this one easier.....
 
.....these were scanned from 5x7 prints, btw.....


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I use leaning against anything sturdy when possible or using my wheelchair as a tripod. My chair has a Bogen Super Clamp with a Bogen head and cable release when I am shooting tricky subjects. I wish there was an ultralight Loftstrand (forearm type) crutch which could double as a monopod!
 
KentTeffeteller said:
I use leaning against anything sturdy when possible or using my wheelchair as a tripod. My chair has a Bogen Super Clamp with a Bogen head and cable release when I am shooting tricky subjects. I wish there was an ultralight Loftstrand (forearm type) crutch which could double as a monopod!
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.....good for you, Kent.....photography can be a marvelous hobby when you start looking for night shots as well as day....it sounds like you're figuring out the game....please post some shots.....
 
.....back to the bracing of the body to act as a tripod....those kitchen shots of frying the chicken were ALL under 1/60th of a second....the only thing I had going for me was the pop-up flash....the pop-up flash on a D200 does not throw the camera into x-sync in any way, it only gives fill-in flashes at least metered Through-The-Lens, TTL, or you can choose a manual full-power pop, which really isn't much more lumen count than TTL....I'll have to get a dedicated Nikon flash that mounts in the hotshoe, I think, for the D200 to go into x-sync in the view-finder.....

.....so, I was having/trying to hand-hold shoot, standing on a large stainless-steel bowl honestly with slick socks, using 5.6 mainly for a decent amount of depth-of-field....during the shots of the chicken frying, I saw black solidly in the view-finder on every shot....that's at least 1/15th or 1/8th of a second.....

.....only if you love the game, practice your stance and body-bracing until it's routine....I humbly submit the suggestion of elbows against the higher stomach pushing in, full breath of air, hold it, flex your diaphram a bit, and let the upper body slump down, to rest on the lungs, which are full of air....that's support down to your diaphram.....

.....thanks for the replies....I thought this thread was relevant.....
 
Your technique described in the first post is the one I've used for over 30 years to shoot consistently well down to 1/4 second in existing light. Of course I also had a lot of experience as a young man shooting rifles out to distance that taught me the benefit of timing my breathing and muscle motion (no, not as a sniper!).

Standing upright (leaning on nothing) I have been able to get consistently good results at 1/8 to 1/15, mainly by using a forward step stance where one foot is placed 2 feet in front of the other, and the body torso is leaned forward onto the front foot. You can't hold that stance for too long - go through the motion and quickly snap the shot works best, in my experience.
 
Hokieman said:
Your technique described in the first post is the one I've used for over 30 years to shoot consistently well down to 1/4 second in existing light. Of course I also had a lot of experience as a young man shooting rifles out to distance that taught me the benefit of timing my breathing and muscle motion (no, not as a sniper!).

Standing upright (leaning on nothing) I have been able to get consistently good results at 1/8 to 1/15, mainly by using a forward step stance where one foot is placed 2 feet in front of the other, and the body torso is leaned forward onto the front foot. You can't hold that stance for too long - go through the motion and quickly snap the shot works best, in my experience.
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.....noteworthy response, HokieMan....a person who looks at the hobby of photography with more than just a casual interest, WILL find techniques that work for them, imo.....
 
Brace arm against ample gut and hold breath after exhaling here. Would love to be able to afford the f1.4 lenses but those are L Series Canon glass and too spendy for me.
 
A non SLR (no mirror slap) will greatly improve your chances as would an in the lens shutter as apposed to a focal plane shutter. One reason Leica Rangefinders have always been good at this type of photography. A cheaper alternative would be a Canon Canonet G-III QL (in the lens leaf shutter and almost silent)

A built in flash on most cameras will barely reach 20 ft. so it's going to be of little use.

If your shooting Digital of course ramping up the ISO and then running the file through a Noise reduction program to help clean it up (usually at a slight loss of resolution) is an option.

And of course with many Digital or modern film cameras Image Stabilization will get you 1-3 more stops. You can also shoot a slight under exposure and use a little post processing to ramp up the Gamma and regain a bit of what you loose.

YOU can also use the stretched string mono pod. Or a real monopod some are quite light weight and compact when collapsed. The String monopod is where you take a 1/4" 20T eye bolt and screww it into the tripod socket on your camera then run a lenght of 1/8" parchute cord down and under your foot. Adjust the lenght of the string so that it is under tension when the camera is at eye level. Buy preloading this axis you will cause the other tweo axis's to be more stable. Your arms becoming the other two legs of a tension tripod. Works the same as but in the oppisite direction as a tripod based on weight.
 
elcoholic said:
Brace arm against ample gut and hold breath after exhaling here. Would love to be able to afford the f1.4 lenses but those are L Series Canon glass and too spendy for me.
Click to expand...

Why I still shoot Canon FD Manual Focus system. I have:

24mm f2.0
35mm f2.0
50mm f1.2L
85mm f1.8
100mm f2.0
200mm f2.8
and a Tokina 80-200mm f2.8 ATX

As my fastest lenses.

OK OK so my 35mm f1.8 Black and Chrome Canon Rangefinder lens is slightly faster.
 
My wife and I both agree that her Canon FD f1.8 50mm lens takes better pictures than my FD f1.4 or her Pentax f1.4. I guessing it's because of the lower edge distortion of the smaller glass. Broke me from having the fastest lenses.

On the flipping shutter on an SLR - I just bought a very unusual film SLR for my niece the budding photographer at a garage sale. It's a Canon EOS RT, with some very unusual through-the-mirror system I'd never heard of before. Apparently it does not flip the mirror but rather light goes through it and the shutter triggers in 0.008 seconds for good fast action shooting. It and a Vivitar Series 1 28-70 wide angle zoom for $50 (owner said he paid $1200 new) - how could I resist.
 
I usually have arms tucked in, elbows against torso. I pretend I'm firing a rifle... either slowly let out breath or hold breath... and slow trigger squeeze until it shoots off. Seems to work ok. Better to have a 'bench rest' -- ie, rest arms on something solid, or lean against something.
 
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