Don't shake that booty!

I am a strong advocator of restraint when using flash for lighting; even if it is past sundown. I prefer to avoid the use of camera-flash altogether, as long as the subject is willing to stand still for those 5-10 seconds to avoid blur in the captured image. But keeping the camera steady for a speed less than 1/60th of a second (your camera will show this speed as 60 or 1/60 shutter speed) is nothing short of a herculean task considering that even in sufficient ambient light, blur begins to creep into the image below shutter speed of 60. So in this post, I will talk about some techniques that will help you discipline your body into standing still and reducing, if not completely eradicating camera shake.

The swan-elbow technique

This is a body posture that helps me steady myself while standing. Through practice I have near-perfected the posture over time. I call it the swan-elbow technique simply because it focuses on resting your elbow on your waist and in the attempt, you assume a pose resembling a meditating, relaxed swan.

Keep your feet apart such that you can stand without wobbling. The minimum distance would be that of the width of your waist. I was about to assume that you are a right-handed person and I realized - cameras are not made for left-handed people! Wow! He he..

Coming back to the topic at hand, you would be placing the camera body on the palm of your left hand and using your right hand for the shutter. Place the left elbow on your left waist. In the process, you will lean forward and your back will arch forth like the neck of a swan.

Now comes the difficult part. Learn to hold your breath. This is how snipers train. They learn to hold their breath and slow down their heart rate. A slow or soft beating heart leads to less tremors in the body and hence greatly reduces camera shake. Practice holding your breath in this pose and you will see that over a period of time, you can actually greatly reduce camera shake through this technique!

Also, keep your body comfortable - don't stress your muscles by extending your arms. Like your left arm, try to keep your right arm also close to the body. Be comfortable so that no part of your body feels pain/pressure/fatigue and leads to trembling.

The Lean Mean technique

No you don't need to slim down for this :p This technique simply hints at making apt use of solid structures to lean on them and stabilize your body to reduce camera shake. For example, instead of just standing and trying the swan-elbow technique, lean sideways on a pillar/column/wall, hold your breath and shoot - this is much simpler!

Put it down

Keep the camera on a stool or any elevated stable structure, look through the viewfinder and shoot. Though this will limit the angles that you can achieve (since the supporting object would have a flat surface), this will provide utmost stability to the camera unless you are standing on trembling ground.

So if you are not carrying a tripod around like a coolie, you can definitely work on the above techniques to get blur-free bright pictures in low-light conditions.

VR / IS Lenses - should I foot the extra buck?

If you look at the brochure of any lens manufacturer, you will easily come across these VR (term used by Nikon) or IS (term used by Canon) lenses which seem to be similar to their counterparts without the VR/IS but are quite highly priced. For example, the Canon EF70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM is an IS lens as compared to the Canon EF75-300mm f/4-5.6 III. You can view these here. These are priced at INR 38,990 and INR 11,595 respectively. Though they don't have the exact same zoom range and USM is another differentiating feature between these lenses, I just used these near-siblings to exhibit the presence of lenses with/without IS.

What is VR/IS?

VR stands for vibration reduction and is the term used by Nikon. Its competitor Canon uses the term IS which stands for Image Stabilization. In either of these technologies, the underlying funda is simple - the lens mechanics detect the movement or the camera holder (the person who is using the camera) and compensates to a small extent for the movement/shake/vibration. Specifically, it compensates for pan and tilt of the camera. IS/VR features do not compensate for blur cause by the subject i.e. a fast moving car or a pouncing cheetah :)

So what's the big deal?

It is difficult for us to keep our hands absolutely steady while clicking a pic, especially when we are poised in unusual poses as we attempt to get that hatke angle. VR/IS is also useful when the lighting is not sufficient. It lets you slow the shutter speed by an additional 1 or 2 stops and yet achieve the same level of blur that you would have obtained in case of a non-IS/VR lens at a higher shutter speed. So you can slow down the shutter speed to 40 to let in more light and make the picture brighter, while still achieving the camera-holder induced blur-levels of a shutter speed of 60.

Should you pay the extra amount for a VR/IS lens?

I would suggest that you do. It's usually a small percentage over the price of the non-VR/IS lens but I personally believe that it's money rightly spent.

Jumpstart your prowess - Turn the dial

A friend recently bought a bridge camera and told me "I just bought this fine camera but I don't know how to use it; so I just set it to auto". So here I am, blogging about how to get to know your camera for the first time.

Any digital camera has a few common features that are easy to understand and use. We get comfortable with a few of those features and stick to them every time we use the camera. I am speaking about the times when we shoot in auto or landscape or portrait preset modes for starters. In this article, I will make a mention of the usual features that a bridge/slr camera has that can be used on and off to take your camera past the AUTO mode.

What is wrong with AUTO?

Shooting in auto is not only the not-so-smart thing to do with a smart camera, it's just so wrong! Would you peddle your way to office seated on a motorcycle? Would you play a mario or tetris on an PS3? Do you watch non-HD content on a heavenly HD tv? If you do, then bhagwan hi maalik hai :o Here are some reasons why you should break free from the nauseating habit of the auto mode.

• When you shoot in auto, your camera decides the shutter speed, aperture and iso for you. Every manufacturer has its own algorithm to help the camera decide what settings to use in different environments. So with an auto mode, different cameras yield different results. This is why we see manufacturers claiming that their camera is the best in the creed for night shots or that their camera has the best focusing mechanism.
• Modern cameras have a horde of sophisticated features like face-recognition which get employed for focusing in auto mode. The drawback of this is that if you are shooting a pic of your dog and there is a person in the frame, the camera will focus on the person and you dog might be out of focus!
• The archilles heel of digital cameras is its focusing mechanism - cameras are blind as a bat when it comes to low contrast or dark areas. Try this in auto mode - choose a plain wall which has just one color and no pattern/design on it (dark or light, doesnt matter). Now try to focus on it. It is highly probable that you will have to try a few times before your camera is able to get a focus lock on the wall.

Switching to manual/priority modes gives you complete control over your camera. Now you won't focus on the stranger in the crowd instead of your sweetheart; you'll be able to capture shots in the dark and much more.

Priority modes 

Aperture (Av)

Use this feature when you want to change the dof and want the camera to choose the shutter speed. This is helpful if the subject is stationary, like a tree or an immobile. The reason the subject needs to be sufficiently stable is that the camera will set the shutter speed to provide a bright picture - it will not care for the relative movement between camera and subject.

Priority mode - Shutter Speed (Tv)

This is used if you want to vary the shutter speed and capture a fast moving object or slow down/create blur in your images. The camera will choose the aperture that provides a bright enough picture, thereby claiming control over the dof.

Manual Mode (M)

In this mode, you can alter both shutter speed and aperture. This mode gives you complete control over the camera. Most photographers always shoot in this mode.

Preset Modes

Portrait Mode

This can be used to click close-up photos, the kinds that you would click if it were a portfolio shoot. In this mode the camera uses shallow dof, thus rendering the background out of focus and giving a portrait effect.

Landscape Mode

This does the opposite of portrait - it uses a deeper dof thus keeping more objects in focus. This is necessary when you are clicking a pic of a wide area, a street view or the horizon wherein the objects in the frame are placed at different lengths from each other.

Snow Mode

This mode uses settings that compensates for excessive reflected light. This is useful to avoid overexposure due to the light reflected by the snow around you. You can take care of this using manual settings also, but as compared to an auto mode, this is a better choice in snowy conditions.

Sports Mode

This mode simply increases the shutter speed so that you can freeze a fast moving object like a car or a running person. You can increase your chances of getting a sharp pic in any mode by employing the art of panning.

Macro

All cameras have an ideal distance range in which the subject should be, for sharp images. If the subject comes too close to the camera, you would need to shift to macro mode or change the lens itself to a macro lens. Macro mode in cameras is used to let you get up close (and personal?) with the subject. This is useful if you want to click a lifesize pic of a housefly or a millipede. But macro mode by default switches to shallow dof and is prone to camera shake.

I hope I have been convincing to some extent, in my argument against the auto mode. The only way to enjoy your camera is to go manual; auto is for your amma appa :)

Happy clickin!

Sid