With modern IS, how essential (really) is the tripod?

Yes, digital comes with higher ISOs and noise reduction.<br>It has to be understood, however, that when handholding there was nor is a safe speed. Things are difficult to put in numbers, because there is no set amoung of movement in our hands, but what we do know is that they are rarely (i.e. never) perfectly still. So there's always a degree of blur. With film and digital alike, you can get very good handheld results. But even at high speeds it is not hard to see a difference between tripod steadied and handheld shots. So high ISO and associated speeds are no guarantee. Thomas is right in his "To reach maximum [etc.]".

<p>While I hand hold a lot of shots (with VR and high ISO) that I used to use a tripod for, I still think that my tripod and monopod are absolutely essential pieces of gear. I would not go without them. In fact I'm considering a Really Right Stuff tripod as my next major purchase. My current tripod is sturdy but needs some work and may be beyond being repaired again -- it has served me for over 50 years. Unlike cameras and lenses tripods don't become obsolete, but they can wear out over time.</p>

<p ><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=282122">Q.G. de Bakker</a> said:</p>

 

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<p>Yes, digital comes with higher ISOs and noise reduction.<br />It has to be understood, however, that when handholding there was nor is a safe speed. Things are difficult to put in numbers, because there is no set amoung of movement in our hands, but what we do know is that they are rarely (i.e. never) perfectly still. So there's always a degree of blur. With film and digital alike, you can get very good handheld results. But even at high speeds it is not hard to see a difference between tripod steadied and handheld shots. So high ISO and associated speeds are no guarantee. Thomas is right in his "To reach maximum [etc.]".</p>

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<p>Here's where pixel-peeping is your friend. Look at your images at 100% and higher to assure that they are tack-sharp. Shooting birds and wildlife, I'll often look at the image on the camera's LCD preview and think, "That's a sharp keeper" only to get home and see it's not as sharp as possible. My hand holding technique has been honed by taking tens of thousands of bird in flight shots and perched birds, while hand holding a 500mm lens. When I switch to landscape shooting, I stay very aware of potential camera shake and turn my shutter to its "soft" mode, hold and breathe as if I'm hand holding 1000mm. It really does work. If in doubt, I'll take and extra shot or two.</p>

 

<p>I don't use a tripod. Don't own one.</p>

<p>I've taken over 3000 Raw captures of night scenes, inside my apartment lit by one 60 watt LED light bulb, macro using a long lens and 2x teleconverter with quite a few shot at 1/6's, f/8, ISO 800 handheld and tack sharp.</p>

<p>On body image stabilization is the best thing since sliced bread.</p>

<p>On a good day, your hands are going to impart an angular motion of about 2 deg/sec to the camera. You can get a reasonably accurate value by pixel peeping at fine details, knowing the shutter speed, focal length and pixel spacing, and applying a little trigonometry. Implicit in this statement is that without a tripod, fine details are going to be spread over several pixels with an high-resolution sensor (e.g., 42 MP in an A7Rii). The best I've seen in that camera, with image stabilization turned on and a 50 mm lens is 2-3 pixels spread. It doesn't seem to improve much even at shutter speeds 1/150 or more. I think image stabilization itself contributes to the uncertainty.</p>

<p>Most of the time that's going to be good enough, but not if you want as much detail as possible in a grand landscape, closeup, document or artwork. A tripod is the difference between merely documenting a subject, and conveying a sense of texture and depth beyond the ordinary.</p>

<p>A tripod isn't enough. You must turn IS and AF off, focus very carefully, let the camera settle after touching it, use the electronic shutter and a long, flexible cable release. Then hope nature doesn't send a gentle zephyr your way.</p>

<p>Edward, can you cite anything to support your assertion?</p>

<p>A tripod is the cheapest thing you can buy to improve your images.</p>

<p>What is cheap about a tripod, Tim? Mine cost several hundred dollars and I hardly ever use it.</p>

<p>I'm awaiting Edward's support for his reasoning, which if it is indeed true, would be compelling for certain subjects.</p>

<p>I DO NOT recommend a cheap tripod. If you're going to use it for long exposures, it needs to be very sturdy and you need to use proper long-exposure technique. </p>

<p>David, if you don't use it, you obviously don't get it.</p>

 

<p>Tim, you're having trouble with reading comprehension. I said that I hardly ever use it.</p>

<p>You still didn't answer my question, "What is cheap about a tripod?"</p>

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<p>Edward, can you cite anything to support your assertion?<br>

</p>

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<p>I don't have anything signed by Thom Hogan, if that's what you're looking for. My conclusions are based on tests I've performed over a period of time. Two deg/sec corresponds to three pixels of a 24 MP sensor at 1/60 sec. Actually resolving one pixel at that resolution requires a good lens and focusing too. You won't see it with a 12 MP Nikon nor with most Nikon lenses.<br>

<br>

In this example, I pulled out all the stops - tripod, IS off, electronic first shutter and electronic cable release, using my sharpest lens, a Sony 90/2.8 Micro and the A7Rii. The insert shows spider silk, which is 1 pixel wide out of 5304x7952. This statue is a familiar subject to me, in a sheltered environment, and I have many other examples, hand held and with other cameras and lenses, but taken over a period of several years. Different spiders, same silk, which is usually invisible. Camera motion can be estimated from the appearance of other details.<br>

<br>

<img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/18161558-lg.jpg" alt="" width="600" height="900" /><br>

</p>

<p>I have to get back to work, but I think I have some examples which will illustrate camera motion, even on a tripod. Camera vibration on a tripod often appears as doubling in the image, which is fairly easy to measure. Hand held motion is more complex - you need the right subject details.</p>

What is cheap about a tripod is that one that costs several hundreds of dollars is a once in your life purchase. Today's favourite cameras, for instance, want you to spend several hundreds or thousands of dollars every three years or so.<br>But you have to make the right decision, choose carefully. Get a heavy aluminium thing, for instance.<br><br>The power of a place like PNet is that it brings together many years of experience. People know things because they have learned over the years those things to be true. That collective knowledge is constantly challenged by marketing, fashion and convenience fueled folklore and myths (like - and this is just an 'for instance' - that thing about carbon fiber tripods being better than the good old metal ones. They are not, only more expensive. Or - another for instance - that a partial and in itself also problematic solution to a real problem such as image stabilization is a perfect solution to a problem, the only other - but real - solution being very inconvenient. They weigh quite a lot, those tripods. And they have to, else they do not work. So it would be very desirable to believe that that partial solution would be a perfect solution. We want it to be, and so it is. Or is it? of course not.). That's what keeps a place like PNet ticking, going over the same subjects over and over and over again. The thing Edward cites in support of his assertion is just that: good ol' Knowledge. I would like to hear from David Stepherns what sort of evidence he would expect and be willing to accept.

<p>I've managed to collect a lot of tripods, mostly Gitzo, both aluminum and carbon fiber, and the difference is not subtle. The advantage of carbon fiber is twofold - lighter and considerably stiffer than aluminum of the same dimensions. Weight is important, because when shooting video, I have to carry and set up at least one, and often two or three for each job. Stiffness is essential because you can't have a camera bouncing when you pan zoomed out to as much as 600 mm (equivalent). The same principles apply to still photography too, except you might not notice it immediately in the results.</p>

<p>I imagine that wood has an higher damping factor than carbon, but it is also a lot heavier for the same capacity and usually limited in height. I have one 18# tripod, and another is more than I care to imagine. Weight alone does little for stability, other than keep the setup from blowing over in the wind, or settling into a soft surface like grass. It's not hard to apply weight if needed (cameras come in bags with other gear). Besides strong legs, stiffness is important throughout, including the column (avoid if possible), head and the mounting system (no rubber or plastic).</p>

<p>None of this is cheap, plus you need cases to protect gear if you move around a lot. Fortunately they last a long time with little maintenance. Cheap, strong and light - pick any two. Buy cheap, buy twice (or more).</p>

<p>For what it's worth, my 18# (including the head) #5 aluminum Gitzo is no stronger than the #3 CF tripod I use for the main camera, weighing about 8# with the head. A similar tripod rigged for still photography is abut 6-1/2#.</p>

<p>You can't use IS on a tripod. At long focal length, the image floats around randomly, and lags a moment or two after a pan. It's like walking uphill in loose sand - aarrrgh.</p>

<p> Actually, with the Canon super-telephotos you can leave IS on. It'll rest when not needed. If needed, like in the wind, you can feel the IS spool up, so wait on that before you release the shutter.</p>

<p>One of my pro wildlife photographer friends helped a tripod manufacturer with a comparison test between heavy aluminium, six-ply carbon fiber and wood. This was for nature photography, using a 600mm lens with mirror slap (Canon) as part of the equation. This was ten-years ago, so mirror mechanics were not as refined as today. Bottom line, the wood won by a large margin. The aluminium and carbon fiber had the same degree of resonance, just at different frequencies. The wood tripod weighed twice as much as the aluminium version.</p>

<p>Anyone using a tripod for landscapes is going to lock the mirror up, or at the very least, use the soft mirror mode, if the camera has one. Don't rely on the tripod to damp mirror slap.</p>

<p>Edward, we're all going to vary widely in our ability to hand hold a camera, so your personal experience has little validity for the rest of us. Some of have hand held hundreds of thousands of shots and some of us haven't hand held 1,000 shots. People on the shorter end of that spectrum, with no specific training at hand holding, probably will benefit from a tripod when shooting landscape shots; otherwise, YMMV.</p>

<p>You have peaked my interest and I'm thinking of testing my own hand holding vs. tripod abilities at various lighting levels. It is a valid consideration and each of us will have a point where the tripod should come out. I want to know precisely where that is. </p>

<p>One issue not mentioned is the forcefulness of mirror slap during shutter release which I'm seeing varies between camera brands/models. My 6MP Pentax DSLR has it so bad that it knocks my kit lens' somewhat loose feeling "quick shift" focus ring out of focus on handheld macro shots that now require me to manually focus with a tight grip on the focus ring and lens barrel. I could feel the slap of the shutter much more forceful on the end of my lens than on the camera's body grip. Sometimes it was so harsh the focus ring moved slightly even while gripping. All this time I couldn't figure out why auto focus nailed it in the viewfinder but didn't give sharp results.</p>

<p>So a tripod wouldn't fix that problem except maybe a higher quality lens with a not so loose focus ring. Edward's claim of higher resolution sensors needing a tripod seems to make sense. But I wonder if he ruled out other factors similar to my little discovery about cheap lenses.</p>

<p>When you do the tripod based shots, be sure to use electronic first curtain shutter and focus using live view. Unless you're using a supertelephoto lens, I would use the lowest ISO available on the camera to establish a point of reference for what your camera and lens are capable of. I moved from cable to radio based triggering to avoid any mechanical transfer of vibration. Turn stabilization of all kinds off. Use an aperture that gives optimal results for your lens and subject.</p>

<p>Then compare to the results from your favorite hand held settings. If you repeat your hand held shots a few times you can see the variation in composition from shot to shot, as well as variation in sharpness. I think you'll probably see that printed images look crispier if shot using a tripod. Personally when I'm doing landscape, architectural work or macro, I don't really accept any variation from shot to shot, in sharpness or composition for that matter. For moving subjects, some imprecision in focusing is expected from shot to shot if using the widest apertures but I mostly shoot my moving subject images hand held (using fast shutter speeds i.e. 1/(3*FL) s*mm or faster to avoid hand held camera shake, 1/200s or faster if the subject is alive but not moving actively, and 1/500s or faster for slowly moving subjects; the most strict of these conditions is applied as the slowest possible shutter speed, usually 1-2 stops faster) but still I would not claim that the results are as good as tripod based shots would be; I simply hand hold my people images because of speed and practicality. For long lens images at 400mm or longer focal lengths I prefer a tripod also for moving subjects (gimbal mount mostly but also some other solutions), and have never seen 400mm or longer shots hand held that are not made visibly slightly dull by the camera shake.</p>

<p>Lots of pontificating here.</p>

<p>500mm hand held:</p>

<p><a title="Diving For Prey" href=" data-flickr-embed="true"><img src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5649/23906217632_99579ffe1f_c.jpg" alt="Diving For Prey" width="800" height="640" /></a></p>

<p>The guy with the Gitzo didn't get the shot.</p>

<p>Thanks Ilkka. I know that, but other readers could benefit.</p>

<p>As for shutter speeds, hand held or not, I find that for human sports you need 1/1000-sec., for mammal wildlife, I find that 1/1500 is often needed, for big birds in flight I use 1/1500 to 1/2500-sec. and for small birds in flight, it's 1/2000-sec. to 1/3200-sec. For birds, I use ISO 800 as my base ISO and move down to 400 in bright sun and up to 1600 in overcast. I meet too many would be bird photographers thinking that 1/1000-sec. is enough and they think that it's more important to hold ISO down than get SS up. Of course, the problem is not camera shake, but subject movement.</p>

<p>It seems that all bird photographers start out with tripods (I did), but hand holding frees the photographer to shoot straight overhead, change positions quickly and pan more easily. Tripods are fine for perched birds, but a negative when going for birds in flight. </p>

<p>That's a nice photo of an American kestrel. I presume the 500 mm lens has image stabilization. It is sharp enough in this application, but 700 pixels wide, it's hard to judge with any objectivity.</p>

<p>I've been looking for images which would illustrate my numbers, but they seem to be buried in antiquity. You need some kind of detail which can be distinguished from other factors, like focus. When I have time, I'm thinking of point a laser at the wall and shooting the dot at a known distance at various speeds, with and without IS. It would be more than one pixel wide, but sharply defined (at least to the first node).</p>

<p>For now, it may suffice to rely on historical data. (1) The rule of thumb for non-IS shutter speed is the reciprocal of the focal length. (2) The rule of thumb for acceptable circle of confusion (depth of field) on 35 mm film is 0.025 mm. The arctangent of (0.025/50) is 1.72 MOA (minutes of angle). At a nominal 1/50 second, that number corresponds to 50 * 1.72 = 86 MOA/sec, or about 1.25 deg/sec. Camera shake alone tends to center on one axis, usually horizontal, and would appear sharper than being simply out of focus. On this basis, my estimate of 2 deg/sec from pixel spread is reasonable.</p>

<p>How that translates into practice is subject to a lot of variation. I've taken acceptably sharp pictures at 1/4 sec, and 1/15 sec with a 35-50 mm lens is not a stretch. The key is "acceptable", which depends a lot on the subject and the desired results. For the time being, I am actually steadier as an elder citizen than in my twenties. Practice helps, and attention to details. Keeping rounds in a 2" circle at 300 yards goes beyond a steady hand and breath control. Even heartbeats count.</p>

<p>A Tripod is like a pair of old boots. You stick them in the closet forgetting that they are there until one day it floods and you really need them. Not sure how good that analogy was, but a Tripod is a great thing to have especially if you like low-light photography, but it also comes in handy in Product photography, Portraiture, Macro work or anything that requires pin-point sharp focus.</p>

<p>Tell you the truth if I were to lose any of my tripods, I would immediately go out and get a replacement, even though I don't really use them that much anymore. It's not that I don't like tripods is that they are a major inconvenience when you are out an about. </p>

<p>Imagine carrying a big heavy Tripod into a restaurant or movie theater. Not only that, you are afraid you might leave it somewhere, never to be found again. These days with Digital, you can always bump up the ISO to astronomical levels. I wasn't that way with film. Remember the old days of getting caught at sundown with your last roll of ISO 100 film.</p>

<p>The other day I saw a strange sight, it was a guy with his camera walking down the street carrying a Tripod. I said to myself "this guy is on a mission", that's how rare tripods have become, but my guess is that's for the casual user or hobbyist. Real Photographers still use them. <br>

</p>

<p>An "acceptable" 0.025 mm circle of confusion on the 42 MP sensor of an A7Rii would occupy a width of nearly 6 pixels. Since the default magnified view in Lightroom is pixel = pixel, you tend to get obsessive about tripods when you want things really sharp, not just sharp enough.</p>

<p>Ed, click through to Flickr and you can at least see the image full-screen. For understandable reasons, I don't allow full resolution downloads.</p>