Steady hold for a P&S

On Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:23:17 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:
: On 2013.04.20 11:50 , Jennifer Murphy wrote:
: On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:52:04 -0400, Alan Browne
: wrote:
:
: On 2013.04.19 15:19 , Alan Meyer wrote:
: I've got one of those very small P&S "travel zoom" cameras (Panasonic
: ZS-9) with up to 16:1 optical zoom. The big challenge in getting sharp
: photos with high zoom is holding the camera steady. It doesn't help
: that the camera is small and light with little weight to damp
: vibrations,
:
: It's a myth that weight dampens vibrations for hand holding. Weight
: means your muscles have to work more. And the more you have to hold the
: weight away from your body, the more work you have to do to keep it
: steady. Lighter is better.
:
: Hardly a myth. Every body has inertia proportional to its mass (Newton's
: first law). Inertia resists any change in motion. A one-pound camera has
: more mass and, hence, more inertia than a one-ouuce camera.
:
: That's fine for pool balls and astronauts. (And it's resistance to
: change in velocity, BTW).

Indeed it is. And every object at rest in space is moving, with a speed we
call c, in the direction (in its inertial frame) of increasing time. To give
motion (in space) to a stationary object, you must deflect its velocity vector
(in spacetime) so as to give it a component in a spatial direction. It's
comparatively easy (assuming you know vector calculus) to show that the energy
required to do that is proportional to the mass of the object. (It's also
proportional to the tangent of the angle of deflection, which means that the
energy requirement goes up rapidly as the imparted spatial speed is increased.
But that's hardly relevant to this discussion, where the imparted speeds are
very low.)

Bottom line: Jennifer's argument is correct.

: But an object held out is continuously subject to the force of gravity
: (here on the planet) and so you have to apply an equal and opposite
: force to stop it from moving. That force is proportional to the mass
: (F=ma).
:
: More mass = more force.
:
: So of course, once something is moving you need to apply a force to stop
: it and continue that force to move back to the first position.
:
: As the force is larger with mass, more force is required for a heavier
: object.
:
: Holding anything away from your body, unbraced, requires continuous work
: to prevent the object from falling. Every little correction is work.
: (Why the preferred hand holding technique for an SLR works well with a
: viewfinder but not so well with the LCD display).
:
: More force=more work = more energy = more tired = less control = blurry
: images.

I've never lifted a camera so heavy that the corrections my muscles had to
make to keep it in place outweighed the damping effect of its mass. Unless you
tell me that you've hand-held a view camera, I'll bet you haven't either.

Bob

On 4/21/2013 1:02 AM, RichA wrote:
Do like a gun-shooter. Slowly squeeze the shutter and allow it to
"surprise you" don't anticipate tripping it. It works very well.

and take a deep breath and hold it until the shutter releases.

Max (ex-infantry)

nospam wrote:
In article , Alan Browne
wrote:

Does anyone particularly recommend a monopod that can double as a
walking stick and fold for airline travel?

They all fold (telescope) to a reasonable lengtgh, but I'm not sure
they'll allow a monopod in the cabin.

monopods and tripods are not prohibited for carry on.

however, the tsa can always change their mind on a whim, 'out of an
abundance of caution.'

I've read quite a few recent reports of airport security in some
European airports to some destinations X-raying a travel tripod or
monopod in the carry-on bag and insisting that it's a "dangerous
weapon" which must be taken out and consigned to the hold in a
separate labelled transparent bag which they supply. Which then
sometimes doesn't appear at the other end of the flight...

Some travel photogs have taken to freighting their tripod to their
destination in advance, or taking only their head and making
arrangements to borrow legs from local photogs, etc..

--
Chris Malcolm

Jennifer Murphy wrote:
On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:52:04 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:

On 2013.04.19 15:19 , Alan Meyer wrote:
I've got one of those very small P&S "travel zoom" cameras (Panasonic
ZS-9) with up to 16:1 optical zoom. The big challenge in getting sharp
photos with high zoom is holding the camera steady. It doesn't help
that the camera is small and light with little weight to damp
vibrations,

It's a myth that weight dampens vibrations for hand holding. Weight
means your muscles have to work more. And the more you have to hold the
weight away from your body, the more work you have to do to keep it
steady. Lighter is better.

Hardly a myth. Every body has inertia proportional to its mass (Newton's
first law). Inertia resists any change in motion. A one-pound camera has
more mass and, hence, more inertia than a one-ouuce camera. The more
mass, the more resistance to any change in motion, and therefore, the
more stable. High school physics.

That's one factor. Another factor is muscle strength (and endurance). If
I am holding an object (against gravity), the limits of my strength come
into play. If the weight of the camera is significant relative to my
strength, there could be some shaking due to muscle fatigue. I would
expect that to be minimal (or at least insignificantly different than my
normal stability with empty hands). That is, the difference in this
factor for most non-professional cameras (from ultra compact to DSLRs)
is negligible. A large professional camera with a huge lens would be a
different matter.

Unless of course it's weight is being taken by a monopod. Then all
your muscles have to do is to provide the residual balancing, aiming,
and steadying. The worst remaining source of shake with a heavy camera
on a monopod is twisting about the axis of the monopod, because that's
where there's least rotational inertia and least frictional resistance.

Some monopods offer tiny pull-out tripod feet at the end, or a small
flip-out foot plate to stand on, either of which does a good job of
reducing that horizontal rotational movement.

Putting these two factors together, I would expect the mass-stability
curve to start at some level (0) for empty hands and increase slightly
up to some maximum value (1-2 pounds) and then decrease rather more
quickly to zero for weights that I cannot lift at all.

My camera with my usual walk-about zoom weighs roughly 2lbs. So does
my heaviest monopod (with little legs). I usually use that monopod
with the camera directly attached with no head, so for taking shots in
portrait mode I have to hold the monopod plus camera horizontally in
the air, which is pretty heavy. Nevertheless for short duration holds
I find the extra mass of the monopod helps to keep the camera quite
definitely steadier than if I was just holding the camera alone. I
also have a two handed grip with hands much further apart than
possible just on a camera body.

For which reasons I often use the camera with the monopod attached but
folded up and not resting on anything. The extra mass and well spaced
double handed grip gives useful extra stability.

No, I'm not big & strong. I'm 70 years old and weigh about 120
pounds. But I do practice heavy camera carrying on a regular basis :-)

The full analysis is certainly somewshat more complicated and involves
more factors.

To the extent that, much as I enjoy that kind of mathematical
modelling, I think the best approach is to postpone the analysis and
go out & try stuff. Doing the analyis after the field experiments
instead of before is always a good idea :-)

--
Chris Malcolm

Robert Coe wrote:
On Sat, 20 Apr 2013 13:23:17 -0400, Alan Browne
wrote:
: On 2013.04.20 11:50 , Jennifer Murphy wrote:
: On Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:52:04 -0400, Alan Browne
: wrote:
: On 2013.04.19 15:19 , Alan Meyer wrote:

: I've got one of those very small P&S "travel zoom" cameras (Panasonic
: ZS-9) with up to 16:1 optical zoom. The big challenge in getting sharp
: photos with high zoom is holding the camera steady. It doesn't help
: that the camera is small and light with little weight to damp
: vibrations,
:
: It's a myth that weight dampens vibrations for hand holding. Weight
: means your muscles have to work more. And the more you have to hold the
: weight away from your body, the more work you have to do to keep it
: steady. Lighter is better.
:
: Hardly a myth. Every body has inertia proportional to its mass (Newton's
: first law). Inertia resists any change in motion. A one-pound camera has
: more mass and, hence, more inertia than a one-ouuce camera.
:
: That's fine for pool balls and astronauts. (And it's resistance to
: change in velocity, BTW).

Indeed it is. And every object at rest in space is moving, with a speed we
call c, in the direction (in its inertial frame) of increasing time. To give
motion (in space) to a stationary object, you must deflect its velocity vector
(in spacetime) so as to give it a component in a spatial direction. It's
comparatively easy (assuming you know vector calculus) to show that the energy
required to do that is proportional to the mass of the object. (It's also
proportional to the tangent of the angle of deflection, which means that the
energy requirement goes up rapidly as the imparted spatial speed is increased.
But that's hardly relevant to this discussion, where the imparted speeds are
very low.)

Bottom line: Jennifer's argument is correct.

: But an object held out is continuously subject to the force of gravity
: (here on the planet) and so you have to apply an equal and opposite
: force to stop it from moving. That force is proportional to the mass
: (F=ma).
:
: More mass = more force.
:
: So of course, once something is moving you need to apply a force to stop
: it and continue that force to move back to the first position.
:
: As the force is larger with mass, more force is required for a heavier
: object.
:
: Holding anything away from your body, unbraced, requires continuous work
: to prevent the object from falling. Every little correction is work.
: (Why the preferred hand holding technique for an SLR works well with a
: viewfinder but not so well with the LCD display).
:
: More force=more work = more energy = more tired = less control = blurry
: images.

I've never lifted a camera so heavy that the corrections my muscles had to
make to keep it in place outweighed the damping effect of its mass. Unless you
tell me that you've hand-held a view camera, I'll bet you haven't either.

I certainly haven't. The older I've got the bigger and heavier my
cameras and lenses have got, and the fussier I've got about the
increasibgly high levels of detail resolution they're capable of. So
far the heaviest camera & lens I've got gets more stable handheld when
I bolt 2lbs of unsupported monopod to it -- I've tested it.

If my gear ever gets so heavy that it would shake less handheld if it
was lighter I'll just use extra weight bearing props, such as a
shoulder pad, a chest prop, or a monopod foot on the ground.

--
Chris Malcolm

MaxD wrote:
On 4/21/2013 1:02 AM, RichA wrote:
Do like a gun-shooter. Slowly squeeze the shutter and allow it to
"surprise you" don't anticipate tripping it. It works very well.

and take a deep breath and hold it until the shutter releases.

I often use a radio remote trigger simply to avoid the instability of
having to push a button on the camera to shoot. That way I can also
follow action and fire with fast reactions without fear of moving the
camera.

--
Chris Malcolm

On 04/28/2013 06:46 AM, Chris Malcolm wrote:

I've read quite a few recent reports of airport security in some
European airports to some destinations X-raying a travel tripod or
monopod in the carry-on bag and insisting that it's a "dangerous
weapon" which must be taken out and consigned to the hold in a
separate labelled transparent bag which they supply. Which then
sometimes doesn't appear at the other end of the flight...

Some travel photogs have taken to freighting their tripod to their
destination in advance, or taking only their head and making
arrangements to borrow legs from local photogs, etc..

If we're checking baggage, it looks like it would be smart to put the
monopod in the checked luggage, not the carryon.

I'll remember that.

Alan