Good Situations to Shoot Handheld

• Mid-day Light
  • When the sun is out in full force, it’s a good time to shoot handheld, and one where I often leave the tripod in the car. Because it is so bright, you’ll be able to achieve fast shutter speeds that will negate any handheld movement.
• Wildlife
  • Wildlife shooting is a great option for handheld shooting, especially if you have a fast lens. Wildlife can move erratically and be especially hard to track on a tripod, often handheld is best. If needed, open up the aperture to achieve a faster shutter speed. Many situations will require you to increase your ISO, which is why we recommend using a camera with excellent noise performance, like the Sony A9 II or Canon R5. I also often underexposure wildlife images when a faster shutter speed is needed because I know with the great dynamic range these days, the darks/shadow detail can be brought back during post-processing.
• Unique Compositions
  • Sometimes a camera on a tripod can’t be physically setup or positioned in the same manner as you handholding. And sometimes, you handholding can open up compositions that are not possible with a tripod. For instance, a few winters ago I put my camera in a 12” ice cave to frame a mountain the background, the shot would have been impossible with a tripod (note, I did set my camera down so it wasn’t technically handheld). I have shot handheld to achieve unique angles many times. I just always watch my shutter speed and check my images in playback.

• Low Light
  • Low light periods like sunrise and sunset can be difficult to shoot handheld. Difficult in the sense that handheld shots will not render the same quality as shooting on a tripod. The big reason is with low light, shutter speeds will be much slower, often requiring you to increase your ISO.
• Water Features
  • Waterfalls, creeks, streams, and the ocean – things landscape photographers love to shoot with slow shutter speeds. Yes, a slow shutter speed around 1/5th of a second to 1 second can create an awesome blurred water effect but it also can be very hard to shoot handheld at those speeds and get sharp shots.
• Focus Stacking or Exposure Blending
  • If you’re interested in stacking multiple exposures for focus or exposure, it can be difficult handheld. These techniques require 2-3+ exposures. On a tripod, we can ensure our tripod doesn’t move shot to shot, while there may be a lot of movement when handholding.

• Low Light
  • Unfortunately, there’s not a great solution for low light scenarios. There’s a point where slow is just too slow. My recommendation is open up your aperture as much as possible, while still achieving focus throughout the scene and bump your ISO up a bit. If you get above ISO 400 or so, you really want to be using a tripod at that point. Not because ISO 400-1600 shots aren’t usable, but because the quality of shooting at a low ISO on a tripod will far exceed those high ISO stills.

• Water Features
  • 1/5th of a second is where I usually start when shooting water – waterfalls, creeks, streams etc. It’s probably my favorite shutter speed for water. It can be really difficult to show that slow on a DSLR with only lens stabilization (or no stabilization). The in-body stabilization potential of mirrorless is actually a reason I chose to switch a few years back. I have handheld my Nikon Z7 as slow as 1/5th of a second and have yielded shots of acceptable sharpness. Another trick for more advanced users is to use auto-bracketing on your camera. Set your camera at the shutter speed you know you can handhold with sharp shots, say 1/20th. Auto bracketing will take a brighter and darker exposure, the bright exposure will be at a slower shutter speed that 1/20th of a second, and should be slow enough to get you some water blur. While post-processing, open both those images as layers in Photoshop and simply blend the water exposure in (you might have to slightly darken it as well). Auto bracketing will also fire off the shots continuously, ensuring the least amount of movement frame to frame.

• Focus Stacking and Exposure Blending
  • Similar to above, bracketing shooting features can make these situations much easier to deal with. Canon and Nikon have focus stacking modes, where the camera will take a succession of images at the same settings, but with the focal plane changing each frame. It allows you to fire off 3+ shots extremely quickly, without even having to touch the focus dial.