Tripods are a pain in the neck. They are heavy, bulky, take time to set up, expensive, draw attention, and even illegal to setup in many buildings and public spaces. But nonetheless, tripods still have their place in today’s world of digital SLR photography. The tripod is an essential piece of kit for any one serious about taking good cityscapes, landscapes, architecture and night time photographs. Sure, you can hand hold if you like but in achieving a shutter speed of 1/30 or greater you will be sacrificing noise from high ISO's and inevitable camera shake. Plus you can't do any fun stuff that only a slow shutter speed can capture such as capturing light trails, silky waterfalls and movement.
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Battersea Power Station - 95sec. exposure |
With the ability to change ISO on the fly, new VR and IS lenses, better optics and smaller sensors the tripod went from an essential piece of equipment to an optional piece of equipment for many. With digital you can keep snapping away until you get a sharp image and chuck the blurry ones. Ever wonder why many photographers take 2-3 images in a row with their long lens? So with all of this negativism and new tech you would think that tripods would be extinct and brands like Manfrotto and Gitzo would move on to something else more lucrative. Well, the truth is a camera support is essential kit for serious photography. I take mine everywhere, day and night.
So why even bother with a tripod? Here are some reasons:
Long Lenses - maybe if you have IS or VR you may be okay but this is tripod territory. Keeping quality in mind; ISO 100, f/8 (for some dof), at 300mm is a tough hand hold. It could be possible if the conditions are right but I'd be reaching for my tripod in this instance.
Noise - Lowering noise in camera requires a lower ISO. I prefer the lowest ISO I can get away with. So the light has to come from either a larger aperture or time. In most cases my aperture is set at f/8 to f/13 which rules out handholding in most low light situations so out comes the tripod.
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Water - I love photographing water. The long shutter speeds can make waterfalls look like silk and rivers look frozen. The possibilities to be creative are endless. You can thank your tripod.
Night Photography - This is in a realm all of its own. Light trails and low light atmospheric images require longer shutter speeds and sturdy camera support. I would have never been able to hand hold the moon light image of Battersea Power Station for 80 seconds. I could have cranked up the ISO up to 1600 and opened up the aperture to f/2.8 and maybe, just maybe after I threw away 98% of the pixels and then sharpened it I might have something good enough to put on the web. Definitely take your tripod.
Light Painting - These can be really cool if done well. It is typically done at night or in low light situations and involves painting or rather filling areas of the frame with light, typically using a flash light or color strobe. Check out Lost America for some stunning examples.
HRD - This can be really fun stuff. Bring your tripod! HDR (high dynamic range) is a technique of combining bracketed images (example: -1, 0, +1) to create an image with a wider range of intensity levels. Special software combines images and creates a 32 bit image which then has to be tone mapped to be viewed correctly on a normal computer screen. When these are done well they look amazing.
Macro - Just as in working with telephoto lenses, increasing magnification also magnifies any camera movement. Also, when working with macro the depth of field is so shallow that your focus area is very likely to drift if you try to hand hold. A tripod an absolute must with this type of photography no matter how well light your subject is.
Self portraits - Obviously!
So it really depends on what you want. I choose a tripod because mine only weighs 3.2 lbs and doesn't slow me down at all. I like having to option to delve into the world of slow shutter speeds if I want. I also use neutral density filters and polorisers for certain shots which soak up a bit more light making hand holding even more challenging. I'm not saying that a tripod is essential for great photography; it’s just another tool to make images. Some of my favorite images are hand held in low light. The following images were all hand held. Just bring the camera in close, tuck in, hold your breath and click!
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Day light images work well hand held due to the today’s modern DSLR fantastic sensitivity and today’s modern lenses. The only thing to watch out for when using a DSLR with a crop factor is something called diffraction. Diffraction is the spreading or bending of light as is passes through an aperture. In the world of full frame (35mm) photography you could get away with f/22 or greater but caution when there is a sensor crop involved. Smaller sensors mean that stopping down over a certain aperture (lens dependant) can cause blur do to diffraction. Stick with apertures from wide open (if it's a pro lens) to no more than f/13 and you should be fine. Bob Atkins explains this phenomenon in better detail.
Camera Shake, Noise and images on the web.
You can't see fine camera shake or noise very well with images optimized for the web because most of the information has been thrown out. So the images you see on this site or any website using web optimized images don't illustrate what a good tripod can do for your photography. Most image shake and noise gets lost when the image gets shrunken down to, say 800x450 and then sharpened. For example my D200 produces images made up of over 10,000,000 pixels. When I place these images on the net I throw away about 97% of the pixels leaving only around 300,000 or the most critical pixels to make up what you see. Then unsharp mask is applied any everything looks great. The image below is what you’re forced to do if you go shooting cityscapes at night without your tripod. It's a 100% cropped section of Boston's lovely cityscape. The image was taken hand held, f/3.8, ISO 1600, exposed at 1/30 of a second. It is direct from the camera with nothing done with Photoshop. Notice how clean the thumbnail looks!
As you can see this is pushing the limits for what the D70 can handle. Amazingly, the shot is not that bad considering the extreme ISO required to hand hold the image. The noise is very harsh but luckily there is no camera shake. Lets see how we can tweak even this photo to look good on the web (although that's about it!).
With a minute or two with Photoshop and Voilà! Where did all that noise go? Neat Image was applied twice, once in high res then again once reduced to 600x400. Slight adjustment to the curve and color balance then finished off with unsharp mask. So if you don't ever want to print your photos and only look at them in 600x400 then leave your tripod at home. I think this is proof that just about anything can look good on the net.
The above image could not be created without a tripod. It was made with the same Nikon D70 at 31mm (dx), f/11,ISO 200 for 95 seconds. The image shown is a 100% crop direct out of my camera. Absolutely nothing was done with Photoshop to the cropped selection (no sharpening, curves, nothing). There is no noise that I can detect. Fantastic quality for a consumer camera and kit lens! Thank you tripod.
New technologies are making photography easier with better results so why not push the limits? Night photography, HDR, super telephoto, macro, and ultra long shutter speeds are just some of the fun things to try when you take that high tech digital camera and mount it on that low tech (not really these days) tripod. So keep your tripods close by and if you don't have one get on and make the purchase, it's one of the few tools in photography that will last you a lifetime.
Buying one?
Tripods very in price dramatically from about $50-1600. If you’re serious just buy anything made by Manfrotto or Gitzo. As in in most everything, the more you spend the better the quality. Your main decision will be size and weight vs. stability. I went with a Gitzo 1 series Mountaineer because I preferred something small, compact, and light yet stable enough for my kit. This tripod is perfect if you shoot mostly wide angle and carry your equipment distances. It works perfectly fine with my 80-200mm f/2.8 just as long as the wind isn't blowing.
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