Tripods

Every serious photographer should have a tripod right? Well these days not so fast.

A lot of new cameras have what’s called IBIS which is an acronym for in-body image stabilization. What this means is depending on your camera you maybe able to handhold at lower shutter speeds than ever before.

When shooting landscapes in less than ideal lighting photographers of the past would bring out a sturdy tripod so as to allow them to shoot at much lower shutter speeds than possible just by holding the camera in their hands.

Portrait photographers use tripods as often they don’t move their camera very much from one subject to another.

Generally speaking with a wide or normal lens most photographers can hand hold their camera without introducing camera shake down to 1/30th of a second.

With a tripod you can shoot shutter speeds down to seconds even hours for some astrophotography situations. IBIS won’t go down that low but newer systems can allow hand holding of the camera down four or more stops. So instead of being limited to 1/30th of a second some cameras will allow shooting down to 1/4 of a second before shake from hand holding becomes a factor.

Now of course even though you can hand hold down to a 1/4 of a second or use a tripod even lower the subject in your viewfinder must not be moving at all. Shutter speeds are still used to stop action in your image as well as prevent camera shake.

Tripods have a lot of other uses including allowing the photographer to get into his or her own photograph. And as I said they are invaluable when shooting landscapes and portraits if only to slow down the process to allow the photographer more time to think about the composition of the image.

So if you want a tripod there are two ways to buy it. First is the expensive way and second is the really expensive way.

Let’s start with the expensive way: I recommend buying a Gitzo or Manfrotto tripod somewhere around $1,000+ and then add a head from Really Right Stuff for additional $500 or so. This will last you a lifetime and you can will it to your grand children.

The really expensive way is to buy a cheap $75 all-in-one tripod. While it may work for awhile if you’ve got a smaller camera body sooner or later the head or the legs are going to start slipping. So then you’ll go out and buy another all-in-one tripod for $300 to $500. This one is pretty good and will last for a few years but as soon as you add a camera body with a telephoto lens you’ll find it slips too but worse it will creep from the weight of the telephoto lens so you’ll never keep the camera pointed at the precise place you were aiming.

So then you decide that maybe a carbon-fiber tripod would be great for travel as it’s so light. One of the problems with light is it’s prone to shaking even in light winds. However it is a great solution if you’re hiking in the woods as it is so light and besides it only costs $500 to $600 or so.

As your photography gets better and your camera bodies will tend to get bigger and heavier and your lenses get bigger and heavier as well.

So the final answers is you start looking at the $1,000 Gitzo and other similarly priced tripods.

Please don’t ask how I know this to be true LOL and yes I currently own two expensive tripods and several cheap ones and a couple of monopods as well. They are all piled up in a basement closet. Don’t say you weren’t warned.