Pro tripod techniques
Improving sharpness begins with a tripod – but you need to know how to use it
Any technique book you pick up will tell you the same thing – if you want to capture professional levels of sharpness, you need to be shooting with your camera on a tripod. By taking your hands off the camera, you instantly remove the biggest cause of vibration and loss of image sharpness. While it is obvious that very long exposures can’t be captured handheld, the real danger is when shooting between around 1/15sec and 1/100sec. It is at these settings that many of us are tempted to try hand-holding our cameras, and at which camera shake may not be immediately obvious in images reviewed on the rear LCD. It is only when images are inspected later, on a computer monitor, that it becomes clear they lack critical sharpness. With your camera and lens standing remotely, you have full control over exposure, camera position and image composition. However, tripod-based shooting possesses its own challenges and risk of detail loss through camera movement. As landscape and travel shooter Mads Iversen highlights, an improperly secured gear setup can cause blur when shooting in extreme conditions. “If it is very windy or your tripod stands in moving water, [simply] tightening the locks of the ball head is not always enough,” he explains. It is essential to correctly place the tripod legs so that weight is evenly distributed, as this will minimise slipping or gradual ‘creep’ of the tripod during an extended exposure. A useful tip is to assess the terrain and consider multiple positions before setting up the tripod, as this saves time re-shooting images or moving the setup with the camera in place – a time when accidents are more likely.