Handholding a long lens

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Not hav­ing to use a tri­pod is a tremen­dous bless­ing for the nature pho­tog­ra­pher, espe­cially those who like me spe­cial­ize in B.I.F. (Birds in Flight). 
What, you say? Hand­hold a long tele­photo? Not pos­si­ble you say?
I am very happy to inform you that it is entirely pos­si­ble – and that I can teach you how to do it with very lit­tle prac­tice. (The exam­ples I use are Olym­pus lenses, but don’t let that throw you, these tips work for any cam­era and any lens.)

One of the things that attracted me to the Olym­pus ZD 300 mm I use was that the first pho­tog­ra­pher Oly sent into the field to pho­to­graph the Le Mans casu­ally remarked that he was pleased to find that he had no trou­ble hand­hold­ing the ZD 300. I decided that if he could I could.
It wasn’t easy at first but slowly I learned. Then I found out that many would not believe me. I recall post­ing sev­eral images on a web forum and being called a liar for suggest­ing that I could. That doesn’t hap­pen anymore.

Not con­vinced that you don’t need a tri­pod? I was sit­ting with my cam­era in my lap, fac­ing west­ward, pho­tograph­ing a pair of White-tailed Kites. Out of the cor­ner of my eye I saw a move­ment and turned to see this Great Blue Heron approach­ing. I lifted the lens to my eye, swiveled my torso nearly 90 degrees — and got the photo. There is no way I could have rotated a lens on a tri­pod — I would have had to run around behind it to focus — and got­ten this photo.

Spring­time Rhapsody

1. Sta­bi­liz­ing your lower body
Sta­bil­ity starts, not with your cam­era, but with your feet and legs. As bipeds, we humans are inher­ently unsta­ble, any move­ment of our arms and/or shoul­ders is imme­di­ately com­pen­sated for by a com­plex series of lower body adjust­ments, all of which con­tribute to cam­era and lens move­ment. You can only be mod­er­ately suc­cess­ful shoot­ing while stand­ing; when it is windy you might as well for­get it entirely.
The answer is to sit on a chair or on a stool with three legs. (No one wants to drag around a four-legged can­vas chair and they are not sta­ble on rough ter­rain.) There are a num­ber of three-legged stools avail­able but most are not suit­able. Rough ter­rain and the neces­sity of sup­port­ing a heavy body that will twist and lean to one side or the other pre­cludes most of the light­weight camp­ing stools or mas­sage stools I have see adver­tised.
The solu­tion: For sev­eral years, I have used a Swedish Walk-Stool, which is very strong, eas­ily col­lapsi­ble and com­fort­able. Made in Swe­den (with all the design exper­tise we expect in a Swedish prod­uct) it is avail­able all over the world in sev­eral sizes; find a dis­trib­u­tor at www.walkstool.com. I call it my ‘Peo­ple Tri­pod.‘
Now, with your lower half sta­bi­lized you can eas­ily rotate your upper body from the waist and move your arms up and down while fol­low­ing the bird. But that’s not all there is to stability.

2. Merge your Cam­era with your body
You need to become one with your cam­era. You do this by lock­ing your cam­era to your fore­head or your cheek bone. If you are shoot­ing a cam­era with­out a rub­ber eye­piece you may have dif­fi­culty. Some cam­eras come with­out eye­pieces, if you have one of these try eBay.  Rub­ber eye­cups are avail­able for many cam­eras. If not, you can get an Orion Rub­ber Eye­guard, avail­able on the web from a num­ber of tele­scope dis­trib­u­tors.
To merge I press my eye­brow to the rub­ber eye­cup and my cheek and nose to the body of the cam­era. This sup­ports my cam­era firmly and takes some of the load off my hand, which allows me to squeeze the shut­ter but­ton more freely. (Yes, this works with most eye­glasses; I wear eye­glasses all the time while pho­tograph­ing.) Tip: If you can’t get a good fit with the top of the eye­cup, tape a bit of foam rub­ber to the top with black vinyl tape.  Black vinyl tape is good for keep­ing the lit­tle pro­tec­tors on the hot shoe in place, also.

Prac­tice sight­ing through the eye­piece of the cam­era while mov­ing your head, eye and camera/lens as a unit. Learn­ing to move your head and the cam­era as a sin­gle unit is the key to sta­bil­ity and it does not take that long to learn. But you do need to prac­tice.
Get out near a free­way and prac­tice shoot­ing cars as they whiz past. Take the pho­tos, blow them up on screen to check what you are doing.

3. Sup­port­ing a long lens
When start­ing out most peo­ple try to use two hands on the cam­era body to sup­port it. (We used to have to do this to turn the focus ring but aut­o­fo­cus put an end to that.) For the best sta­bil­ity you need to sup­port the front of the lens bar­rel with your left hand under­neath it. Put your left hand as far out as you can, and don’t hug your elbow to your side or try to sup­port it on your chest. This will impede your track­ing – your arm has to be free to fol­low your head.

Heavy lens? I rest the whole rig on my lap in between photo oppor­tu­ni­ties. You are sit­ting after all; you might as well relax between takes.

4. Breath­ing
Do not try to breathe in and hold your breath. With your arms, shoul­ders and head locked to the lens, there is not much chance of your breath inter­fer­ing. To tell the truth I don’t know how I breathe; but I do not con­sciously hold my breath. I know I can’t be hold­ing it long as I do not feel my heart­beat build up as it would when hold­ing my breath.
Sit, take a few moments for your heart­beat to slow down, relax and just breathe nat­u­rally. Then you are ready to go.

5. Cloth­ing
You need to be able to move your arms freely. Be sure your shirt, jacket, what­ever, has large arm­holes. Small arm-holes will  cause your arms to pull on the jacket body, slow­ing you and pulling you off-track. When it is cold, wear one or more sleeve­less sweaters under your jacket. Your arms must not be impeded.

6. Expo­sure Set­ting
For the ZD 300 mm and ZD 90 – 250 mm (both f2.8 lenses) I rec­om­mend set­ting the shut­ter speed at 1/4000 with­out an exten­der, 1/3200 with the 1.4 exten­der and 1/2000 with the 2.0 exten­der. (How­ever, I don’t use either exten­der very much, it is too hard to track with them.) Set your ISO at 400 (400 – 800) and use a grain remover such as Define2 or Noise Ninja when pro­cess­ing. Don’t worry about need­ing a high num­ber f stop to get greater depth of field. You are not con­cerned about the back­ground when shoot­ing birds in flight. All that needs to be sharp in a pho­to­graph of a bird in flight is the eye, beak and claws. Peo­ple expect a bit of blur espe­cially at the wing tips. (But not much.)
Go back and look at the older photo books of birds. Most, of course, are black and white. Notice how blurry the wings look. Then look at cur­rent books, shot at higher shut­ter speeds — which looks best?

7. Image Sta­bi­liza­tion
Oth­ers do but I don’t rec­om­mend IS with mov­ing birds. Image Sta­bi­liza­tion is intended to cor­rect for slight cam­era body move­ment. How­ever, you are mak­ing major cam­era move­ments track­ing birds in flight and the IS will make other move­ments to coun­ter­act your move­ments. Image Sta­bi­liza­tion can cause some weird feather pat­terns in pho­tos of birds in flight. I will use IS for some pho­tos. For exam­ple I recently was pho­tograph­ing hum­ming­birds at a feeder. These guys are hard to track, as you know if you have ever tried. Hold­ing your cam­era steady and shoot­ing when they come into view works well, when IS is on.  Here is an example:

8. Posi­tion your­self
Fig­ure out where the birds will be and posi­tion your­self so the sun will be roughly at your back when you are fac­ing the birds, or where you expect them to be. Try to posi­tion your­self so that the wind is com­ing from your right or left. Plan to shot when the birds are fly­ing into the wind. It is much eas­ier to fol­low them and much eas­ier for your cam­era to get the focus and expo­sure correct.

9. Bird Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion
For­get it till later. Shoot before you iden­tify the bird. Often the bird will not be of inter­est and you will dis­card the image, but it costs you noth­ing. If you wait to dis­cover if it is a bird you want to pho­to­graph it will always be too late to get your cam­era up and ready to track it.    Shoot first, ask ques­tions later.

10. Auto focus?
Of course but remem­ber that auto focus­ing mech­a­nisms need con­trast in order to focus. Eas­i­est to focus on are white birds in flight against a clear sky, with the sun at your back. The worst are dark or black birds against a dim, dark jum­bled back­ground. On a dark day, or backlit.

11. Prac­tice
Prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice. Prac­tice on pigeons, auto­mo­biles speed­ing past, bicy­clists, what­ever is moving.

An Extra Tip.
Since you can’t use a neck strap very well with a long tele­photo lens and need a way to carry it more safely than dan­gling it by the cam­era body, make use of your tri­pod mount. Rotate it 180°and con­vert it into a very secure han­dle. I carry mine with the lens point­ing to the rear and place my thumb on what is now the front of the mount to secure it. This works for the ZD 300 mm, the ZD 90 – 250 mm and the ZD 150 mm.

That’s it. Grab your cam­era and go get ‘em!

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