How to take a sharp picture
When you are taking a photo with a hand-held camera, whether a point and shoot camera or a digital SLR, you need to hold the camera steadily and observe your breathing technique. When holding the camera, brace your arms against the sides of your body to help steady your camera. Leaning against a hard steady object such as tree, lamp post will help to keep yourself steady. Another way to steady your camera is by placing your camera on some sturdy object. With modern camera, you can also rely on the anti-shake technology such as Image stabilization (IS) or Vibration Reduction (VR) lens. To ensure you get a good picture, you may want to take more shots of the same scene or portrait so that the chance of getting a sharp picture is higher. Alternative you can take the picture with a tripod
Taking pictures with a tripod
Another way to take sharp pictures is to utilize a tripod. Carry a tripod around to take pictures could be cumbersome. For traveling, it is advisable to carry a light weighted tripod. A light weight tripod is associate always associated with its cheapness and it won’t hold your camera rock steady like the heavy and expensive ones.
In the market nowadays, expensive tripods don’t come with a ball-head attachment, you have to buy it separately and it comes with different quality. A lesser quality ball-head will allow the camera to slight slowly downside due to the weight of the camera and the gravitation pull.
Bean-bag
Carry a small sandbag or bean-bags is another alternative to tripod. It could cushion your hand / camera to help you achieve steadiness.
Cable release and self timer
Sometime when pressing your shutter, your camera could shake even when it is seated on a tripod. You could employ a cable release or self timer to help take care of this.
Mirror Lock-up
For more advance camera, you could use a mirror lock-up feature help take sharp pictures. When you set the mirror lock-up feature to lock, the mirror in the digital SLR is lifted up so that when taking picture, the mirror will not move until the picture is taken thereby limiting movement on the camera while taking picture. However to take the picture in this mode, you need to press the shutter release twice, one is to lift the mirror to lock position and another to release the shutter.
Written by: David
