Working without a tripod

- From time to time viewers send in email asking me why I don't use a tripod more often, and I feel guilty about it actually, that I'm not more diligently carrying a tripod around and using it, and my short answer is always, well I'm lazy, they're bulky and they're heavy and all of that's true, even with a lighter tripod it's still an extra thing to carry and it's just a hassle. But when I actually stop and think about it, when I'm out shooting I realize, no there are other reasons that I don't use a tripod more often. Now I do use a tripod and I do travel with one, and I'm pretty diligent about always making sure that I have one at least with me if I'm going on an extended trip because if I'm going to shoot a low light there's simply no way around long exposures requiring a tripod but for a lot of other stuff I really prefer not to work with a tripod because it changes the way that I shoot.

When I'm mounting the camera on a tripod and framing things, I get really locked in to this very precise, geometric, squared-off angles kind of world view that it's just uptight, and it means I can only take a certain type of image that may be the right type of image for what I'm shooting but what bothers me about it is it means I experiment less, I'm less likely to move around and try different things, I'm certainly less likely to try odder angles or maybe going across the axis of the image, something that I'm, when I'm on a tripod, I get very, everything's all parallel and perpendicular and correct, and working without a tripod makes me looser and that changes the way that I shoot and I don't want to do something that's going to hem me in that way.

Again, there are times when you've got to have a tripod and there's no way around it, and you get better shots because of it. I'm not saying all this simply to rationalize my lack of tripod but to point out that there are sometimes softer, more ephemeral reasons for the gear that you choose, whether you choose to work with a tripod or not. This is a mirrorless camera that I've been shooting with almost exclusively for the last, I don't know, eight months to a year, even though I've got a nice SLR at home and there are a couple of reasons why.

One, it's smaller and lighter so it's easier to carry, but then there's some weird reasons. This camera doesn't have a mode dial, there are no modes, I have an aperture ring here, I have a shutter speed dial here, those can both be put into an automatic mode but there's something about not having to choose a mode that makes me feel in a weird way closer to the process of shooting. That may not make any sense and when I stop and think about it, I don't know, that doesn't make any sense. The fact is in certain ways shooting with my SLR is easier and faster but this feels like there's less abstraction between me and the exposure process and so I've really been enjoying shooting this way.

When I think about shooting a show of some kind, a theatrical performance of some kind I wouldn't take this camera, I would take my SLR because I feel like I can work more quickly with it, but the fact is this has a higher burst rate and in some ways is faster to work with but the larger, bigger solidity of the SLR gives me more confidence for some reason in shooting something like a live performance even though objectively I would imagine there's no difference at all. We look at these cameras and we look at their spec sheets, and we boil their sophistication down to a set of numbers and we compare those numbers, and that's all important but it's also very important to pay particular attention to that weird emotional response you have to a piece of gear and the way that it impacts your shooting, not because it may actually have an impact on your shooting but because of what it does to your head while you're shooting.

You don't want anything distracting you, you've got enough problems fighting your own internal editors and the difficulty of shooting without also thinking, I don't know, this feels, this camera's too orange or whatever it might be that's bothering you. Those are legitimate concerns, don't write them off and think that, oh I just need to get over it because technically this is the right camera. Yes, technical specs matter but your emotional response to the camera, the weird relationship you have with a piece of gear, that all matters too, pay attention to that stuff.