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How to Hold a Camera and Panning Tutorial

We are right outside of the studio, and in this video I have six quick tips when it comes to how toe hold your camera now when you're shooting it super fast shutter speeds these tips well, they don't really matter, because your shutter speed is so fast that how you hold the camera isn't going to make a difference, but when you begin to slow down the shutter and let's say you, I don't have a tripod handy, these tips are going to make all the difference in getting a sharp and usable image. The cool part is at the end of this little quick tip tutorial, we're gonna walk out to the side of the street. We're going to be awesome, panning shot. We're going to try and get a motorcycle going by, but we do have to hopefully hope that there's a motorcycle driver going bi rd column drivers or writers motorcycle writer I don't right now before we jump into our six tips legal hadn't mentioned that when you are slowing down the shutter, your best bet is to always use a tripod, but some of you may not ...

have a tripod or you might be shooting in a scene or in a place where they don't allow tripods or maybe you're just like me and you forgot it either way, these tips on how to hand hold your camera and get sharp images are going to come in very handy and holding handy that was like a little pun right there all right? So starting off from the top with number one is when you are holding your camera you're going to use your left hand or base your offhand so depends if you're left or right handed I'm right handed so I use my left hand to basically brace underneath the lens then we're going to use the right hand of control are settings from the right side the camera and we're going to tuck in our elbows right to my chest right here and we're going to bring the viewfinder right up to our eye now what we're essentially doing is creating three points of contact with the camera and that's what all these tips are designed to do is to create more points of contact the more points you have the camera, the more you can keep it stable for example, if I'm just holding it out like this, this isn't a very stable way to hold the camera when I bring in my other hand I hold underneath the lens to brace it and I bring it to my eye we now have three points of contact with my eyes being the last one so this is the one that is kind of the correct way to hold a camera now for some of you it's not really that comfortable and I'm notorious this all the time. Sometimes I just don't want to have my hand underneath the lens, so I go like this. If you're shooting at a fast shutter speed, it really doesn't matter. But when you're slowing down your shutter speed, even I make sure that I'm holding the camera this right way. So that way, everything's embraced your rebels against the chest and you're good to go. Just a reminder, though, when you are shooting with slow shutter and your hand holding, take a couple extra shots just to make sure that you have some turn out the way you want. Okay now, let's, go on to number two. Number two is basic when you're slowing the shutter tto find an object brace against so for example, this object could be a lovely wall, like the conveniently placed while right here. It could be a tree. It could be whatever you want. All you going to do is lean against that object and do the same thing that we did in tip one, both elbows in hand, underneath the lens, right hand controls, basic, you're controlling camera and then eyepiece up. Now, with this wall bracing, I can get this shutter speed even down slower and still get adequately sharp image let's move on the handholding tip number three which I like to call the elbow shelf now when you're in a scene that has no trees present there's no walls there's no, nothing it's just kind of sad actually, that really sounds depressing. No trees, no nothing, just me. Yeah. Anyway, if you're in that type of a scene well, you could do the elbow thing that works great and that's actually my preference but another preference. Another way that photography studio like to shoot is what I call the elbow shelf. You bring your off camera hand up to your camera shoulder. Okay, so my right hand is my camera arms I'm gonna bring to my right shoulder crop the elbow up, place the camera right on top of the elbow and then you bring it up to your eyepiece. Now, aside from making you look super awesome and making it look like you're shooting stuff that's really far more important and it actually is it's actually very stable of a method toe hold your camera and you can get pretty slow on your shutter speeds. Still, for me, I kind of prefer the elbows tucked in it's just my own I think it's more for the fact that I don't like the way I look when I do this but whatever to each their own right all right, so coming away from the superhero like elbow shelf going to go into the super squad, which is holding tip number four now for this one, I'm going to be honest, I really cannot do this method of holding my camera because I'm not that flexible, but some of you are, so I'm gonna show to you anyway, it's a little embarrassing, but whatever you're going to go down into a squat now, the way that this works, my gosh, is that you have to get down low so that your butt is basically you're not flexing anything, okay, so has me a relaxed position now for me, I'm not relaxed at all, but you're going to bring you like that little jump like that froggie staff okay, you're gonna bring the elbows in on to the knees and you're gonna bring the eyepiece up just like this, and if you can actually squat properly where your butt is completely flat and all your muscles are relaxed than great that's a wonderful pose for holding your camera, but if not, if everything is like basically flex and you're moving it's a terrible post, do not do it, you're not flexible just like me let's move on to holding tip number five, which is kind of much more my speed because I got to sit down. So holding that number five is to sit down now using this method. Oh, man, we can slow down the shutter so slow, it's crazy. Basically, we're going to sit down. You could sit down on a curb again, sit down on anything you'd like a bench, whatever you would do the same thing we did before except what we're doing here is creating a sort of human tripod or what I like to call the pie pod. Okay, elbows on the knees bring the eyepiece right to the eye. Now we have three points of contact. We basically have our elbows going down our legs and we have my torso connected to the eyepiece using this method. Oh, man, we can get down to a half a second, a full second shutter. And remember, I'm still taking a few shots to make sure that some of them are adequately sharp, but we can get down to really slow shutter speeds. Last tip, though, when you're especially getting to a half second hand held shutter and you're trying to get an adequately sharpe images it's going to be a little difficult? One thing that you must do and this is holding tip number six is to regulate your breathing, so let me stand back up some thinking time okay, I feel like I've worked out already, but all I really did was sit down. Oh, my gosh. All right, so when it comes to breeding, the main tip here is to not hold your breath. When you hold your breath, you're actually depriving your muscles of oxygen. When you do that, your muscle going tremble. We don't want that want everything to be stable and to do that, you simply need to regulate your breathing. Now, if you are a military trained sniper, this should be just part of your standard everyday routine anyway, so I don't have anything to teach you guys, but for those that are not military trained snipers, all you're going to do is use one of the techniques that we talked about. So let's say we bring our elbows to our chest, we're gonna hold underneath the camera. We're gonna bring the eyepiece up, just like so, and we're gonna breathe slowly and it's kind of that was not a very slow breathing like meditation, all breathing. Now we're not going to shoot during a breath. We're going to shoot, actually in between breaths. So if I were to demonstrate how that's gonna work, I'm going to get my focus, get everything already hold still, take a breath fire between fire between and so forth, so you're basically firing in between each breath you're breathing slowly and that way it keeps your body very still that is the best way toe hold still or to keep the body stable when you're shooting a long shuttered drag to simply hand held. Now these sixteen, they're going to come in really handy when it comes to pulling off great and adequately sharpe images when you have no other option than the handhold were actually take these tips right out to the street now and we're going to pull off a shot. What we're gonna do is do a panning shot where we basically slow down the shutter we're going to pan with the movement of a car or hopefully a motorcycle and capture a cool action shot were basically show that motorcycle kind of streaking across the scene let's go out there and do that now, all right, so we're here on the screen and the first thing I want to do is dial in my exposure I'm going to start with the shutter speed first because it's for basically compositional purposes, I want to capture motion, so I'm going to slow the shutter speed down now, let's say at one fifth of a second I'm going to get a decent amount of motion, but if I were to slow it to one twentieth of a second, I'll get even more motion as I pan with a car or motorcycle. The problem is that the slower we go in the shutter speed, the more emotional going get with kara's well, it's going to be difficult to get a car or motorcycle whatever that subject is to be sharp so it's a little bit of a trade off, the faster we go, the easier it is to get attacked sharp image the slower you go, the more emotion we're getting and the more interesting a shot that we have. So you got a kind of balance that sweet spot for this shot. I'm going very between one twentieth, to say one thirtieth of a second again helps a lot if your lens has image stabilization and I'm on the eighteen to fifty five is just the standard kit lens, and it does have stabilization on it, so I'm gonna make sure that stabilization has turned on. I'm at one twentieth of a second and then basically from here I'm dialing my exposure on my aperture two around f eleven, maybe f thirteen just to make sure that I'm not blowing out anything in the background, so we're going to do is just take a quick shot road quick on duh let's just make sure that using the history ram and yeah, you can see that with the history ram we haven't blown really anything out okay, so we can see that we have all environmental detail from the shadows, all of the highlights now, it's really going to be a waiting game to get the right car in the right composition. What I'm gonna do is pre focus, so oh, and by the way, I so said the one hundred I wanna maximise dynamic range and the shot I want to have all that detail work with in post production, so what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna focus on where I'm expecting the motorcycle to be. I'm also going to leave room for the frame or basically for the subject, whether it's a motorcycle or a car as I'm panning, gonna leave room in front of that motorcycle or a car to basically moved into ok, so now it just gonna be a matter of waiting for the right vehicle to go by, and we're going to use the same techniques that we use before elbows in hand underneath the lens, and we're gonna bring up to the high peace zoom in a little bit. I'm pre focusing right where the motorcycle would be. And now we're just gonna wait for that motorcycle if you want, you can practice with the car. So here is a little w r x I'm just gonna pan along with it and assumes that goes by I'm kind of just capturing. Is that right? Is it goes by okay, I'm gonna zoom in a little tighter. I see a volkswagen bug coming let's test it on that so again, pan and that you just way to do this is to keep your auto focus point right over the car right over the subject while it passes through the frame. We want to match the speed of our pan to the speed of the car. If you don't, then the car's gonna look blurry. If you match the speed of the pan to the car in the car will be sharp and background is gonna be what's in motion, which is exactly what? All right. So your challenge with this tutorial is to use these tips on how to handle the camera without your tripod. Go out, slow your shutter, speed down and get some shots in action doesn't have to be cars or motorcycles. It could be action and athletes in sports and so forth, whatever you can dream up, go and upload it to us, our land when you're done and show the community how you did it