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Technique
How to hold
your camera
steady
1
Keep your feet a little wider
than hips-width apart.2
Tuck your elbows in against
your body.3
Hold the camera and lens
fi rmly in both hands and look
through the viewfi nder with the
body against your face.4
Squeeze the shutter release
gently and don’t lift your fi nger
during the exposure.5
Just before you trip the
shutter, take a breath and hold
it through the exposure.6
Take advantage of any
convenient leaning points.days values of 4 to 5.5 EV
are typical, but higher
values are becoming more
common and Olympus
claims up to 7.5 EV with its
OM-D E-M1 Mark III with a
stabilised lens mounted.
Canon is also claiming 8 EV
compensation for the EOS R5.
The old rule of thumb is that
you should use a shutter speed
that’s the reciprocal of the
focal length, or the e ective
focal length if you’re using a
camera sub-frame sensor.
That means that if you’re
using a 100mm lens on a
full-frame camera you need to
use a shutter speed of at least
1/100sec. And if the same
focal length is used on an
APS-C format camera you’ll
need a shutter speed of at least
1/150sec, while you’ll need at
least 1/200sec on a Micro
Four Thirds camera.
If you gain 5 EV of
compensation from a
stabilisation system you
should be able to shoot at
1/3sec with a full-frame
camera and 1/6sec with a
Micro Four Thirds camera
and get a sharp result.
However, the compensation
measurements are made in
labs following standardised
tests and in practice the
results can vary from person
to person, and even from day
to day, so it’s a good idea to do
a little testing of your own.
Also bear in mind that if you
had a few too many the night
before or an extra couple of
shots of espresso in your latte,
you may fi nd you can’t hold
the camera as steady as usual.
It’s also important to
remember that the
stabilisation isn’t designed to
correct for you jumping
around or moving the camera
while you shoot. It
compensates for accidental
movements when you’re trying
to hold the camera steady. I’ve
managed to get sharp images
with 3-second and longer
exposures when shooting withthe Olympus OM-D E-M
Mark III and E-M1 Mark III
at an e ective focal length of
24mm just by standing still
with my feet slightly wider
than hips-width apart, my
elbows tucked in against my
body and the camera braced
against my face. When I’ve
had a railing or post to lean
against, I’ve captured sharp
results with exposures as long
as 8 seconds.
Exposures measured in
whole seconds are long
enough to capture blur in
moving water and crowds, and
the ability to shoot them
without a tripod is very
liberating.
While Olympus rules the
roost for IS, Fujifi lm’s
GFX100, a medium-format
camera, has an excellent
stabilisation system that
delivers an impressively high
hit rate at 1/8sec and 1/15sec
when the GF 63mm f/2.8 R
WR lens is in use. We’ve
never had it so stable!Even at ISO 64, an ND filter
was needed to extend the
shutter speed to 2.
seconds to smooth out the
choppy water of this lake
on a sunny day in March