Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/01/09
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]George Berger wrote: > > We were taught to exhale, then "catch" your breathing by closing the > throat. This gives a significant decrease in body fluctuations over > the "take a breath and hold it" approach. > > Lagavulin *or* Talisker should be the whisky of choice < grin >. > Several things, first a breath has two components, inhale then exhale, so when I causually say 'take a breath and hold it' this means inhale, exhale, stop which is what you are saying. Today I did take some under available light (1/8-1/15 sec), and paid attention to exactly what I do: smoothly Inhale, click, smoothly exhale, click, smoothly inhale click.... If i were to slow down it would be smoothly inhale and exhale, pause, click, smoothly inhale and exhale, pause, click. I don't close my throat, this causes the body to tense up. I just stop breathing. Again, this is much less important than what your hands are doing. Relaxing the hands and arms is of utmost importance. If you *try* to hold your hands still and tense up, you get opposing muscle groups fighting each other, this causes baaad tremor. Click by gently squeezing your fingers together, so as to depress the shutter but not deflect the camera body. You can brace your arms against your chest which probably works almost as well as using the tabletop tripod. Time and time again, if the photos include people, the background looks perfectly sharp but the subjects are blurred by their own motion. Most people pause at the end of a movement to try to shoot just after a movement ends (e.g. turn of the head, raise of the hand). The more relaxed you are the better it works. Jonathan