Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/03/19

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Subject: [Leica] What are your secrets to handheld shots?
From: "Les Bonser" <lbonser@worldnet.att.net>
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 10:32:17 -0800

I was discussing photography with a friend last week. He has a digital
camera and isn't really into it, but he humors me and asks intellegent
questions. We had taken a road trip together recently (some photos are on my
web page) and my only real comments on his digital pictures were related to
an occassional fuzzy shot. I suggested that they were probably caused by
camera shake. And of course, his comment back was "I'm very careful about
holding the camera still."

Anyway, during the discussion, I learned that he assumed the exposure was
instantaneous. I told him it's not; it takes some fraction of a second.
Properly educated about shutter speeds, he couldn't figure out why sometimes
his shots blurred if he was doing everything possible to hold his camera
steady. I didn't have an answer for him except that something was
occassionally causing him to move the camera slightly.

Well, this got me to thinking. During spare moments over the last couple of
days, I'm wondering to myself about this. I finally grabbed my camera (while
trying on a new 35mm lens!) and did some dry shots around the house getting
a feel for the balance of the new lens on the camera and for the change in
the viewfinder. The thing I finally noticed (and it took me a while because
it's become automatic) is that I wait until the bottom of each breath to
trip the shutter at the natural pause in each breath.

That's a little trick I picked up learning how to shoot a pistol in
competetion. As you exhale, there's a momentary natural pause before you
inhale. To minimize muzzle weaving, pistol and rifle shooters are taught to
squeeze the trigger at that natural pause. I hadn't been intentionally doing
it, but I'd been applying the same principle to my camera technique. I'm
routinely able to get excellent shots at 1/15th and sometimes good shots
down to 1/8th or 1/4th of a second hand-held with a 45mm/50mm lens. I say
"sometimes" because sometimes there are other factors involved (muscular
shake from holding a position too long, or the subject is moving too).

Anyone else have any tricks like this?

Les Bonser
Technical Writer and Amatuer Photographer
Las Vegas, Nevada
http://home.att.net/~lbonser (home of the PhotoDog!)