Does Nikon Make Snap-Caps?

I really like it when I find skills that cross over from one of my disciplines to another. For some years, since I was a pre-teen, I have held an interest in marksmanship. I’ve spent time on the range using various techniques that improve target acquisition, accuracy, and steadiness of hold. As I’ve begun practicing photography again, I’ve found that many of these methods are as useful when pointing a camera as with a pistol or rifle.

In this article, I hope to offer a few techniques that I’ve found to be useful when in the field. Some of them are common sense, and there are some that may seem odd. One or two of them may earn you odd looks from your spouse or significant other. Follow along and see how many of these tips you can use in your everyday (photo) shooting. These guidelines assume that you are using an SLR body with protruding lens. Adapting them to a smaller point-and-shoot camera should be possible, but may require some adjustment to account for the differing size/shape.

The Body as its Own Tripod
Depending on the size of your lens/body combo, your camera can be quite heavy and/or bulky. In low light conditions where you’re lacking a tripod or other means of support, you can use parts of your own body to steady your hold. The three key areas to remember are the knees, the hips, and the elbows.

If you have a horizontal surface to lean on, you can set up a bipod with your forearms and elbows. Hold the lens in your left hand and the body in your right. Brace your elbows on a solid surface, about even with your shoulders. The result should be that your forearms and the surface should form a close approximation of an equilateral triangle.

If you are in a sitting position, or can assume one and still frame your shot, you have a couple of options available to you. First, tuck your right leg up so that the calf comes horizontally across the front of your body (think 1/2 of “Indian style”). Draw up the other leg so that your knee is in front and the bend of the leg forms a triangle with the ground. Rest your lens-hand elbow on the raised knee, and distribute your weight evenly on both buttocks.

Your other ground-braced option is kneeling. Place your right knee on the ground, and leaving your left foot flat on the ground, make a right angle with the left (those raised Catholic know this as “genuflecting”). Again, rest your left elbow on your left knee to steady the camera.

If you must remain standing, you have two choices: hip brace or free-hold. To hip brace (this tends to be easier for women), tuck your left elbow into your left hip and cup the bottom of the camera with your left hand. Free holding is simply firmly grasping the lens and body and minimizing arm & upper-body movement.

To minimize arm and upper-body sway or shake, always tuck unbraced elbows close to the body. If you leave your elbows out, they’ll end up literally swaying in the breeze. Bringing the elbows in close to the body dramatically increases steadiness, especially in unbraced free-hold situations. When standing, try putting your left foot forward pointing at the subject, and the right foot behind at a right angle. This is probably the steadiest standing position, as the front foot controls fore/aft movement, and the rear foot steadies against lateral sway.

Breath Control and Follow Through
Tripping a shutter is really no different than squeezing a trigger. Once you have as good a brace or steady hold as you’re going to get, you want to minimize other sources of camera shake. The main two are your breathing/heartrate and the pressure you place on the shutter release.

When pressing the shutter release, keep a firm, consistent grip on the body and apply smooth pressure to the release button. Don’t stab at it. Take up any slack as you frame your shot (if your camera has a two-stage release) and then apply steady pressure until the shutter trips. Hold the shutter release until the mirror has cycled. This is called “follow through” and ensures that during the period where the shutter action is cycling, you are not disturbing your aim unnecessarily.

To control movement from your breathing and heartbeat, you must learn breath control. In marksmanship circles, this is sometimes called BASE (breate, aim, squeeze, exhale). Set up your shot, steady your camera via one of the bracing methods, and breathe normally. Begin taking up the slack in the shutter release, take a few last slow, deep breaths, and while exhaling use your tongue to close off the airway. This will momentarily slow your heartbeat and stop upper body movement resulting from your breathing. Hold your aim and steadily release the shutter, remembering to follow through. Then resume breathing normally. Don’t hold your breath for more than 10-15 seconds, as you’ll begin to shake with the effort of holding the position. If you count 15 and still haven’t tripped the shutter, breate normally for a half-dozen breaths and begin again.

Using bracing, breath techniques, and follow-through, I have successfully hand-held shots all the way down to 1/4 sec at short telephoto focal lengths.

Dry Firing
One of the time-tested methods for practicing one’s shooting technique off the range is “dry-firing,” or going through the motions of firing a shot with an unloaded weapon. The same can be done with a camera. After all, you don’t necessarily want to be blowing through film for the sake of practice.

To hone your bracing, breath control, and follow-through simply pick a blank wall and tape a piece of paper to it. On the center of the paper, draw a single black dot. Set your camera to a slow shutter speed (1/2 sec. works well) and go to the other side of the room. Center the dot in frame and practice taking pictures, paying attention to how much the dot moves around. Observe how much or how little the dot moves from the center of frame when the action cycles to evaluate how well you’re performing your follow-through.

Another way to use “dry fire” methods is to do offhand shooting. When shooting skeet or trap, the target is small and moves fast. The shooter has to spot the target, swing in line with it, and take the shot all in the matter of a few seconds. Shooting sports events or other action scenes requires similar skills, and learning offhand methods will help with any subject who can’t or won’t be posed (ie: kids and animals).

Believe it or not, this is one case where the television can be your friend. You can practice this technique even on the rainiest of days.

Sit at a normal viewing distance from the TV and zoom in so that you can’t see the entire screen in the frame. Then, pick up subjects on the screen and quickly frame them and shoot. This is especially challenging with music videos and commercials, since they’re so full of quick cuts that you usually only have a few seconds to acquire, frame, and shoot your subject. As weird as this sounds, it will greatly improve your skills at shooting action events, where things happen fast and won’t wait for your camera.

By practicing dry fire and offhand shooting, I’ve found that I’m nearly as fast with a fully manual camera as some folks are with an auto-focus, auto-wind gadget-box. If you practice these skills, I can almost guarantee that for both fast and slow, your photos will improve.