In late 2018, I bought a Fuji XT-2, in part because I liked the grain from the X-Trans sensor—it’s yummy and reminds me of my chemical darkroom days. Digital grain, of course, is a high ISO phenomenon, generally regarded as an unfortunate compromise that you should avoid having to make. But that’s what I wanted, so I cranked that dial (yes, on a Fuji, it’s a dial) to 6400, 12800, even 25600! But this blog is not about grain, its about tripods—my point is that once I fell in love with grain (again) I started to leave my tripod at home, or on my backpack anyway, I starting composing differently, and I think better. I spent the bulk of my 2019 hikes shooting handheld, and it was both a constraint and a freedom—both are sources of learning, creativity, and inspiration. Shooting differently led to new projects, changed where I wanted to go, changed what I wanted to shoot, and generally made me more excited about photography. I want to share that experience in some depth in hopes that some of you might find opportunities in this as well.
Taken at dusk in November: ISO 6400 at F2.8 and 1/15th second. Camera in my hand, my hand on the ground, using the flip up screen on the back of my Fuji XT-2.
I find the grain in the above image, especially in the “light at the end of the tunnel” part of the background, enhances the photo immensely—not using a tripod wasn’t a compromise or a trade-off; it was unnecessary and an obstacle to the composition I wanted. For the same reason that many photographers will recommend you ditch zooms and take primes, I want to say ditch your tripod and try handheld. In both cases, constraints can lead to creativity. If I had been shooting all day on a tripod and wondering where to put my tripod was my kind-of default mental approach to a scene, would it have occurred to me to take this shot? Probably not, or at least not in this way. But since I was nearly back to the car and had been playing all day with the flip screen and no tripod, I instinctively knelt down and put the lichen right up in the 18-55 mm lens and the camera nearly on the ground.
Playing in the tide at Bandon, Oregon last November. Handheld with my hands just above the water and looking down into the flipped out Fuji XT-2 screen, I shot at 1/10th of a second and f16 , which gave me an ISO of 800, which on most cameras is indistinguishable from 400 or 200 or 160—the print looks fantasticly clean, no tripod needed.
The above image was probably the most fun photograph I made in 2019. To capture a sense of action in the tides and get the camera, and thus the viewer, right down in the action, while keeping the camera dry, I had to shoot an outgoing wave. This involved running into a retreating tide and quickly placing the camera, manually pre-focused at the hyper-focal distance and f16, just above the water with the rear flip screen up to allow me to compose looking straight down, and snapping a few frames before ingloriously running away from the incoming next wave. I chose 1/10th of a second because that was about as slow as I felt I could handhold the camera under these circumstances with the stabilized lens set at 10 mm, and that left me with ISO 800, which on any modern camera hardly has any noise at all. Again, I don’t feel I was making any trade-offs by not using a tripod; I was opening up opportunities I simply didn’t have if I was using one.
Advice about how to mix up your approach, how to constrain yourself, and give yourself assignments, etc., are ubiquitous, but the same advice-givers will encourage you to get a sturdy, tall, high quality tripod, and emphasize that this purchase is one you should not skimp on. Fundamentally, I agree. But what if the lack of a tripod is a constraint, in all the right ways? Learning about what matters more than “clean” ISO images, realizing that front-to-back sharpness is just another artistic choice, and that out of focus areas aren’t just for portrait photographers, discovering there is a middle ground between smooth broken and focus stacking, and perhaps most importantly of all, that there are just some places in 3-dimensional space that you should put your camera but you can’t get your ballhead, might be the result of embracing some hand-held shooting time.
What I love about this image is the sense of verticality and distance combined with expanse. Especially viewed large, I feel like the tree is right in my face but extends beyond my sight, where it gets wrapped into other trees, all continuing on and on and away from me, but that I am also wrapped up in them. It’s as if by touching this tree right in front of me, I am touching the whole forest. Taken handheld, with my hand and the lens hood on the tree, 15 mm full frame equivalent at f4.0. The only way a tripod and ballhead are getting this done would be to pound a piece of 1/4-20 threaded rod into the tree and screw the ballhead into it. Please don’t, especially into this tree.
The extollers of tripod virtues invariably include the three-legged wonder’s ability to affect your mental state—it will slow you down. And this is true, and good. Except when it isn’t. Landscape photography isn’t always static. Like the great military expression “hurry up and wait,” we can find ourselves standing around for hours waiting for good light, and then spend 20 minutes in a good goddamn rush to capture as much of that yummyness as we can before that last few frames where you glance at the back of your camera and realize that your current composition may be your best yet—but the light just isn’t there anymore. Sad, but you know you got the goods and you’re giddy about getting the images downloaded and ogling over them while enjoying a hot or cold beverage in a comfy chair. My question is: how many more compositions would have been available if you were not on your tripod during that rush? Sometimes, at least, faster is better.
A beautiful but shortlived scene, thanks to my dog Ana (see below).
The second I saw this semi-frozen, somewhat snow covered puddle sitting in the middle of a long, skinny mound of rock, I went to work, trying to emphasize the graphic beauty of my discovery. After trying a few unsuccessful ultra-wide shots, I zoomed into 24 mm and it clicked; I clicked the shutter a few times, and then I thought “What if I could blur that background even more?” I unslung my tripod and begun setting up a little ways back so I could get a longer focal length and thus shallower depth of field going, when, bam! My dog, apparently thinking that beautiful blue surface that was captivating my soul at that point in time was just a discoloration in the rock, stepped into it, broke the ice layer on the top, and sunk to the bottom of the hole (it turned out to be quite the hole, not just a puddle). I cried inside, then panicked and rescued the dog, then I laughed because she looked like the most surprised drowned rat ever, and then I cried some more on the inside because that place will never look just like that again in a thousand winters. I’m glad I spent some time working over what I wanted to shoot handheld, not just going on auto pilot and methodically setting up my tripod. This isn’t the first time I ended up using or liking one of my “test” images shot when first discovering a scene, finding that the more methodically composed tripod shots just lacked that something special that I captured with my initial gut reaction and yet somehow managed to lose—as my rational brain started imposing fundamentals and technical settings into the mix. It’s hard to just go with your gut on a tripod.
Even shots in a dark forest like this one can achieve very acceptable ISO settings—400 in this case—if you are willing to shoot at wider apertures and allow out-of-focus areas to enhance what you are trying to convey.
The same logic employed by those who would want us to put the camera on a tripod so that we can slow down and see things we would not otherwise see works in reverse—getting off the tripod can force us to see things differently by forcing us to do things differently. When I discovered the short wind-weathered and time-mangled tree in the above shot, it appeared as if the three branches were having a conversation. To render the image that way, I tried to highlight the detail in the “mouths” of the foreground branches with a decent focal length and lower ISO—55 mm (about 82 mm in full frame terms) and ISO 400 would do. This involved standing in a bush, and I wasn’t so sure I could get my tripod stable in that tangled mess, so I shot wide open at f4 handheld. f8 seemed like a safer bet, but I knew that at f4 the background would still give the impression of the forest, not a generic blur from a 1.8 or 2.0. I didn’t realize at the time how much the contrast between the foreground detail and the background blur would add to my intent for the scene. This is a theme I’ve been continuing to develop along this ridge for the last year. The things you learn when you can’t have everything your own way. Or have your tripod.
I’m not a hater of tripods. Indeed, after avoiding using one for most of 2019, I’ve been really, purposefully, and carefully enjoying using mine more and more this year. But that is my point—like nearly all things in photography, if tripods become dogma, if the way we use them becomes habitual, they constrain our choices, and blur what we allow ourselves to see. So put the damn thing away once in a while, take a faster lens, embrace “grain,” and go out and play differently than you have in a while—and just see what happens.
I’ll leave you with a “cheap shot” at tripods—sometimes a tripod just might be dangerous! Here, I opted to stay loose and shoot handheld for obvoius reasons—railroad tracks don’t get shinny because tortoises polish them in the night.