While at Photoshop World, I picked up some really valuable camera-holding techniques from my session with Joe McNally and Moose Peterson. I’d been doing a few myself, but one or two were new and made a big difference. If followed correctly and consistently, these tips can save you a few stops of light, allowing you to lower your shutter speed as far down as 1/5 second, depending on your subject and lens length.

The most important part of these techniques is that you shoot with your left eye to the view finder. If you shoot with your right away, the techniques won’t work. So, what if you are a right-eye shooter? Honestly, I’m not sure. I’ll do some research and try and provide a companion post in the near future - in the meantime, you can try switching eyes. Also, if you shoot with a Point and Shoot camera, a few of the steps won’t apply. A few will, though, so make sure you still read on!

You can refer to the technique shots at the bottom of the post for visuals on how the various steps look.

Also, as an interesting note, several of these techniques are quite similar to shooting a rifle. I’m not much of a gun enthusiast, but I did shoot a .22 when I was younger and a lot of the skills transfer over (stabilizing the gun against the body, pressing the trigger when exhaling, etc.).

Step 1: Left Hand Should be Under the Lens

It is critical that your hand is under the lens. It helps support it and the camera and is very valuable in reducing camera shake. When using a long, heavy lens, this is much more obvious as you nee dto support the weight. But, it is equally important with smaller, lighter lenses because it helps get your hands in the correct position.

Step 2: Position Your Feet and Body

Your left foot should be in front of your right foot at a reasonable distance. The exact amount varies, but the point is to provide a solid, balanced foundation.

It also allows you to position your torso so that your left shoulder is slightly forward, providing better positioning for the camera and to prepare for step 3.

Step 3: Curl Up and Rest Your Camera in the Nook of Your Shoulder

I’ve always followed steps 1 and 2. Prior to the class, though, I hadn’t done steps 3 or 4 - and believe me, they’ve made quite the difference.

The idea is to tuck your left elbow against your body and curl up enough to rest your camera body against your shoulder. This is much easier with a larger body or with a battery grip. But, it is possible with a standard body. The pictures shown are with a Canon 40D, which is only a little larger than the Rebel series. When using a shorter lens, you may be able to continue wrapping your hand back around to where your right hand is - you won’t have much room to get your left hand directly up under the lens.

This WILL FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE initially. The difference it makes is definately worth it though. It provides remarkable stability. It also gets you in the stable mindset. I found myself propping up against walls, etc. much more often after starting this technique just because I was thinking about being stabilized.

Step 4: Roll Your Finger Over the Shutter When You are Exhaling

First, you should press the shutter release when you are exhaling. Remember that your body is acting as the stabilizing force and that breathing can affect the movement of your entire upper body. By pressing the release just as you begin to exhale, your body is moving the least amount possible.

Also, your finger should never leave the shutter. The slamming (or even tapping) action of your finger pressing down on the shutter can cause unecessary shake. Keep your finger on/just next to the shutter and simply roll your finger over it to press it down the needed amount.

Image 1: Bad Posture The left shoulder isn’t forward enough, the elbow is out and the hand is at the side of the lens (if it was a smaller lens, it would have easily been on top).

Image 2: Better Techniques The left shoulder is forward a little more - the elbow a little further in and the hand is underneath the lens.

Image 3: Best Techniques The shoulder is way forward and the camera is tucked up against it. As needed, the hand is still under and stabilizing. This provides a maximum amount of stillness in the shoot, especially when combined with Step 4 tips.

About Stringpods

I love tripods - I own several and always like to go and browse through others when at the camera store. Recently, one particular tripod has received a lot of attention. More attention that Gitzos (a particularly great brand) or any of the others. And, to boot, it costs about $2.

What are these popular little things? Stringpods. Recently, I’ve seen at least 5 or 6 articles on Stringpods, a small, very portable tripod-like device. All are DIY (do-it-yourself) products and involve a string, screw and washer-type object. You put the screw in your camera’s mount area (the part in the bottom where you would screw a tripod in), the washer under your foot, connect the two with the string, and pull the camera up until the string is taught. As a result, the camera is supposed to be much more steady, which can come in very handy. I’ve seen reports that it can give you an extra 2 or 3 stops of light.

So, if you are at your camera’s fastest aperture (let’s say 2.8) and your shutter speed is at 1/60 of second. Anything below that can often become blurry (unless you have very steady hands). By using the stringpod, you can handhold the shot all the way down to 1/30 without loss of sharpness. This could be very cool.

Stringpod Results

I decided to put it to the test and build my own. It cost about $2 and took a little over 20 minutes to assemble (I made several - after the first, they went even faster). I’ve tried a few shots and it definately feels more stable and does allow you to handhold at slower shutter speeds. I’m not sure about the 3 stops, but at the price and size, I’d recommend putting one together and tossing it in your bag.

Build Your Own Stringpod

The following are the steps I took when putting it together.

1. Collect your materials. I found all mine in the same hardware aisle at Home Depot. The total cost was about $10 and I was able to make 4 strinpods, and had lots of string left over.

Piece of nylon string. Cut it to about the same height as you are (so that when you pull the string taught the camera will stop around eye level). A little longer is okay - you can trim as needed.
1/4″ bolt with larger threads. Mine was 1″ long and seemed to work well. It also had a nice head at the top for twisting.
1/4″ Washer. This is optional I suppose - I wanted something that would snug up against the bottom of the camera to hold it in place a bit better. I chose one that had metal on side and rubber on the other.
Larger Washer. This is the piece you step on. I choose a $1 carabiner

2. Tie one end of the string to the bolt, leaving about 1/4 of the bolt without string on it. I used a special fishing knot, called the Snell knot.

3. Once tied, I trimeed the string and singed it, along with the other, untied end. It helps keep the string from unraveling. Nylon string singes nicely.

4. Place the washer on the bolt, pushing/twisting it down snugly to the string.

5. Tie the other end of the string to your washer or other item. I chose a carabiner for several reasons. First, it was larger - I played around a bit and had a tougher time stepping on a small washer. Also, it provides some more meat to wrap the string around for storage or to shorten the stringpod when holding the camera a little lower.

That’s it - your stringpod is now finished.

Ever had a scratched DVD (movie or data DVD full of photos) that froze at a certain point and seemed unusable? I have and it can be aweful.

This happened to me a while ago and I really wanted to finish watching the movie (nothing worse than getting hooked and being cut off half way through). I was desparate and remembered a tip I’d heard about but never tried; toothpaste.

Put a small amount of toothpaste on your finger and gently rub it around the usable side of the DVD. Then, with a very soft cloth, gently rub it off. It fills in any of the scratches that may be causing the problem.

I’ve used the technique several times since then and it’s amazing how well it works on movies and on data DVDs.

I ran across a great image in Flickr one day that, as is often the case, inspired me to play around a bit. The photo I found was of a young girl laying down in a box with the illusion that her legs had disappeared - the photo displayed above was the final product in my attempt to recreate the Flickr photo (I really wish I saved that link - I wasn’t able to find it again - just my luck). It didn’t turn out quite as well as the one I saw, but it demonstrates the effect well.

I also did this because one of the models I use most often love to see her picture. After I showed her the picture, I think she liked it even more than I did! She got a big kick out of the fact that I could make her legs disappear.

This two part series will cover the process I used to create the photo. In this, the first post, I’ll review what I did during the shoot. The second post will cover how I finished the effect in Photoshop.

What You’ll Need

It doesn’t take a lot of expensive equipment to do this - at least on the camera side of things. I used:

• Camera - I used a Canon Rebel XT, but a point and shoot would work fine.
• Tripod (or a box, pillow, etc. to set your camera on)
• Box
• Clean space - the effect works nicely on a hardwood floor, but you could do it anywhere.
• Cute kid
• Elbow pads - this may not be necessary for everyone, but it took me a few minutes to get everything worked out and my model’s elbows started hurting.
• Lighting equipment. You definately do NOT NEED this. I placed a small hot shoe flash (Canon’s 430 EX, triggered by a transmitter on my camera) and an umbrella to her left to create some directional light. You could easily place things next to a large window or other soft light source.

The Shoot

The shoot was the easiest part of the whole process and took a little less than 15 minutes. You can reference a few of the shots directly out of the camera, shown below.

1. I started by taking a medium-sized box and pushing the inside flaps up inside the box. You can actually see one of the flaps behind her head. In retrospect, I should have cut that one flap off. Leaving the others is important, though, as it helps keep the box rigid and in a proper shape.
2. I angled the box appropriately, making sure that the back was not visible and that you couldn’t see through to the back of the box from the front (you would end up seeing the wall behind). At this point, it is important to make sure the box doesn’t shift through the rest of the shoot.
3. I placed the camera on a tripod about 8 feet away. I then composed the shot as you see. If you don’t have a tripod, you could easily use another box or other solid object. Like the box, you’ll want to make sure that your camera doesn’t move for the rest of the shoot (this backfired a bit on me - read on for more about that).
4. MY EXTRA STEP - I then set up my light/umbrella to camera left at about 45 degrees. If you don’t have an off camera flash, position everything near a large window.
5. First, I took several frames of the empty box (see Picture 1).
6. I then held my hand on the box (so it didn’t move) and asked my model to slide in, as shown in Picture 2. I took shots of several different poses with her in the box. Ideally, the two shots should be at the exact same perspective, zoom, etc. - one with the model in, one without.

   Unfortunately, while I kept the box still and had my camera on the tripod, I didn’t have a monitor for another young one wandering around the room, who bumped into my tripod in between shots. Normally, I would have started things over, but my model was done with it. I still had a decent perspective (the box is roughly at the same perspective). The shot was at a different magnification and rotation - two things I can fix it Photoshop. I don’t like to do that in most cases as it takes more time to do it in Photoshop than to get it right in the camera, but I really wanted to move past the shoot and see how it would turn out - the girl felt the same way. The two pictures should give a good enough idea of what this stage is trying to accomplish though.

That’s it for this step - now that we have these shots we can move to the computer. Stay tuned for the post 2 in the series for what to do next.

Picture 1 - Click for a larger view.

Picture 2 - Click for a Larger View
(Picture 2 should be the exact same as Picture 1, just with a person in it - see step 6 above to learn why they aren’t the exact same).