Five Stones - Courtesy of my Trusty Tripod

7:55 PM. Not exactly prime photo making time up here in the hills of New Hampshire in August. While sunset was officially 7:57 PM tonight, in the forest, surrounded by trees, and between a couple of hills, it's really much darker than you would think for two minutes prior to sunset. This is typically right in the middle of the golden hour, that time of day when the low angle of the sun and the amount of atmosphere that the light has to pass through gives it a beautiful warmth, but along the banks of the Piscataquog River in New Boston (population 5076, 2008), there was no such light this evening.

The most important piece of gear that any photographer should have (after top quality lenses), is a rugged tripod, and while I use my tripod about 99% of the time, this is situation where it really earns it's keep. It takes an un-shootable situation, and gives you the latitude that you need to create the image that you have visualized in your mind.

ISO 400-------f25-------6 seconds-------Polarizing Filter

This shot doesn't get made without the tripod. There's no way to stabilize the camera for that long without one, and the long shutter speed and tiny aperture were mandatory to blur out pieces of debris that were floating by in the current, and to get the proper Depth of Field. The Polarizing Filter was used to eliminate glare, but it also required adding about a stop of exposure. Even under good shooting conditions where you wouldn't normally think about a tripod, the stability that it adds even at faster shutter speeds, will add noticeable sharpness to your images.

Do yourself, and your images, a favor. If you have a tripod, use it. If you don't have a tripod, get one. You won't be sorry.

Ooooooh, your camera takes such nice sharp photos......

No, it doesn't. My camera is a tool and it does what I tell it to do. Your camera should do what you tell it to do too.

You need to provide your camera with the proper tools to get it to do what you need it to do for you.

The two things that will provide you with a sharper image are:

1. A tripod, preferably, a good tripod.

This is the most under rated piece of photography equipment there is. The single biggest difference between a "snapshot" and a "photograph" is the use of a tripod. You can lean on a tree, hold your breath, or glue the camera to your forehead, but none of this will improve your steadiness and the sharpness of your image like a tripod will. The rule of thumb is (please, no comments about the origins of "the rule of thumb") that your shutter speed should be at least equal to, if not faster than the focal length of your lens. If you are using a 100mm lens, then your shutter speed should be at least 1/125th of a second. If you are using a 200mm lens, then 1/250th of a second is the slowest acceptable shutter speed to hand hold your camera. Even at these speeds, a tripod will improve your image sharpness. A tripod will always improve your image sharpness, and there are circumstances where getting any kind of shot will be impossible without one.

"But I don't like lugging around a tripod."

So don't. Just understand that your images are not as sharp as they could be if you did, so don't be surprised when your shots are not as sharp as they could be, and you see sharper images elsewhere. Refusing to use a tripod is crippling your photo taking ability.

















2. Good glass (lenses)

Imagine spending $1000 on a stereo system for your car or your home and hooking up $49 speakers to it. What's it going to sound like? It's going to sound like a $49 stereo system. Cheap speakers create cheap sound.

It's the same with cameras. Cheap lenses (including the cheap zoom "kit" lenses that come with most DSLR's) produce images with less sharpness, detail, and contrast, than their more expensive brethren.

Prime (fixed focal length) lenses have been the route to go, offering much better optics and apertures than the cheap zooms, but now, there are some very nice zoom lenses available that will give you excellent quality as well. There are too many options and systems available to make any specific recommendations, but do your homework. There is a reason why the Nikon 70-300 f4.5-5.6 can be had for $109 and the Nikon 18-200 3.5-5.6 ED IF AF-S DX VR is $679 and the Nikon 70-200 2.8 AF-S VR ED IF is $1,600. All lenses are not created equal.

I understand that everyone is not financially able to spend $1600 on a lens, but there are always many levels in between. There are a couple of very good third party lens manufacturers (Tamron and Sigma) that can also be options.