If you want professional quality video, the first piece of advice would be to shoot off a tripod, no doubt about it. Using a tripod gives you rock-steady video shots.
At the same time, lugging a tripod around indeed qualifies as a pain in the butt, especially if you’re by yourself or hiking a sizable distance. It slows you way down.
Another drawback of using a tripod is that it restricts your selection of camera angles. Tripods take up a lot of room, and you probably can’t fit it into the corner that would give you the awesome angle. Sometimes you just don’t have time to hassle with a tripod.
HANDHOLD THE CAMERA INSTEAD
Handholding is convenient and fast. Done well, in the right circumstances, your average viewer perceives handheld as steady video and probably can’t tell that a tripod wasn’t used. Done poorly, most viewers can tell and will be irritated.
So how do you handhold well?
ZOOM OUT
The single biggest tip it to get in the habit of shooting everything with your zoom lens on the widest possible setting. In other words, zoomed all the way out. Zoomed out will also be called a wide-angle setting.
Shooting everything on the widest-angle possible minimizes how much shakiness shows in your picture. It doesn’t eliminate the shakiness. It simply diminishes how much shakiness shows.
If you take two cameras shaking the exact same amount and one is on a wide-angle and the other is zoomed-in, the one that’s zoomed in will look terribly shaky and the one zoomed all the way out won’t. You can consider this somewhat of an optical illusion.
After all, the cameras are moving the exact same amount, it’s just the amount of shakiness that shows up in the final picture is hugely different.
This means you walk up to whatever you want a close-up of and take a wide-angle shot of it.
Huh? Does that sound contradictory?
Think of it this way, to get a steady shot of something when you’re hand holding the camera, you must be physically quite close to it, have your lens zoomed all the way out, and be as close as you can possibly be and still get the shot in focus.
This will get you a wide-angle shot of the object, but since you’re so close with the camera, it’s still a close-up of the object.
Don’t stand twenty feet from something, zoom in on a minor detail and expect a hand held shot to look steady. It won’t.
This is the reason why you see TV news photographers up in people’s faces. People assume we’re just a rude bunch, but actually the motivation is to get steady video while on a close up of their face.
PROPER POSTURE
Proper posture helps you handhold the camera well, too. Generally, stand up straight with your weight balanced on both feet.
- Relax
- Breath
People tend to tense up and that might help them be steady for about three seconds, but eventually the need for oxygen becomes paramount and the steadiness of your shot will go down the toilet real fast when you gasp for breath.
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF SUBSTITUTE TRIPODS
Other tricks to help you get steady video hand holding the camera is finding substitute tripods. There’s always something.
- Set the camera on a table or counter top.
- Lean up against tree, the wall or something else steady.
- The floor works well for low-angle views. If necessary, stuff something under the front or the back of your camera, so you can tilt it to the proper angle.
Another thing to keep in mind about hand holding for steady video is that the more lively the action, the less likely it is that unwanted camera shakiness will show.
In other words, if you’re hand holding an extreme close-up of water rushing over Niagara Falls, the camera shake won’t show like a handheld shot of something perfectly still.
The viewer will get all wrapped up in the movement of the water, but if there is no movement in the shot, any camera movement sticks out like a stinky onion.
I hope this information helps you make better video.
Lorraine Grula