Slowhand-Held

I keep a tripod in my car. And in our Niro, there' a hidden space in the trunk that has the exact dimensions for storing that tripod so that it remains secure, almost as though Kia had designed that space for just such an object.

It's as if someone on their design team was a photographer and wanted this kind of storage space for his hobby.

Having the tripod stashed away in our vehicle makes it handy when I don't plan for a particular shot but an opportunity avails itself and I'm ready to go. On this outing, however, I wasn't going to take it with me.

It was a grey day and in the woods of Gatineau Park, there wasn't much light on the trails. But I brought my camera with me because where we were going, I knew there'd be lots of opportunities to take pictures.

I brought only my Sony α6700. I've been to the Carbide Willson Ruins many times with my Nikon cameras and I wasn't in the mood to take the time and do some comparison shots, as I've done with the α6700 and my D750 over the past few weeks.

I just wanted to take photos for the sheer joy of it.

Also, DW and I were doing this hike with both of our daughters. Kid 2 was visiting for the long weekend and she also brought her boyfriend. I didn't want to slow down the whole gang so I could shoot with both cameras. (As an aside, I've pretty much made up my mind about what I'm going to do with my Nikon. Stay tuned.)

This was the first time that I was visiting this historic place with my α6700. And I was hoping to test the image-stabilization quality on this dark day.

I've already shared this image in this week's Wordless Wednesday post, but for Photo Friday, I wanted to focus on it because taking this shot was foremost in my mind when I chose the camera. In Wednesday's post, the photo is almost lost amongst the others.

I usually bring my tripod to the Carbide Wilson Ruins because I always want to slow down the waterfall. I still wanted to slow down the waterfall this time but I wanted to see how slow I could take the exposure and shoot it handheld.

The general rule of thumb for handheld photography is one over the focal length of the lens. For example, if you're shooting with a 50mm lens, you should shoot at no slower than 1/50 of a second. Because most cameras don't have that shutter speed, you would need to dial it to the nearest faster speed, which is usually 1/60 of a second.

A 100mm lens would require a shutter speed of no slower than 1/125 sec., and so on.

For a crop-sensor camera, you must also take in the crop factor for the lens. A 50mm lens on a Sony or Nikon crop-sensor camera would translate into 75mm, so the slowest shutter speed should be 1/80 sec. for the Sony and 1/125 sec. on most Nikon cropped D-SLRs.

I kept my 16–50mm kit lens on the α6700: following the rule for handheld shooting, I should have kept the shutter speed between 1/30 sec. and 1/80 sec.

For the waterfall, I zoomed in to 40mm, which is the equivalent of 60mm. I'll let you do the math for the minimum shutter speed.

The Sony α6700 has IBIS, which is in-body image stabilization. This means the sensor is able to move inside the body to give more stabilization, which reduces camera shake. My 75–350mm lens also has image stabilization, giving me sharper images when zoomed in.

The 16–50mm lens has no stabilization so it's all up to the camera. And so I kept shooting until I felt I was still getting sharp images.

Unfortunately, I could only see as closely after shooting as the review could show me in the camera's viewfinder. I'd have to wait until I got home to see how clear the images actually were.

Now, in truth, I only took three shots: first, I shot at 1/80 sec; next, at 1/50; and again, at 1/15 sec. After that, when I saw the results, I didn't think I could shoot any slower without a tripod.

Sony α6700 | 40mm | f/8 | 1/15 | ISO 800

I should have tried anyway, to be sure.

The shot taken at 1/15 sec. is pretty good. The surrounding leaves seem still, despite a slight breeze. The rocks are sharp. And the water is nice and soft, just as I intended.

What do you think? Have you shot, handheld, at a slower speed? Let me know in the comments.

This experiment was a success and has taught me that I don't always need to carry my tripod with me. I'll still keep it in the car but I won't necessarily carry it with me to a photo shoot.

Happy Friday!