How to hold your camera

By PRAKASH MISHRA
Even with vibration reduction readily available, the way that you hold your camera can often make or break a photograph. Too many people seem to pinch-hold their camera by the four corners of the body, as if it were a photograph. There's good reason for this: it's a natural-feeling way of holding a small compact camera at arm's length. Unfortunately, the moment you move the camera up to your eye (when looking through the viewfinder of a DSLR for example), it becomes the worst way of holding the camera from a biomechanical standing. Your elbows spring out from your body as the camera comes closer to your eye, and the weight of the lens remains totally unsupported, tipping the front of the camera down, even with lightweight kit lenses.

Cup, not grip

Here's a better way. Cup the lens in your upturned left hand, thumb and forefinger sitting just behind the lip at the front of the lens mount. Don't grip the lens; just rest it in your left hand.

If the lens is too stubby to hold in this manner, cup the underside of your camera instead. Now, let your right hand loosely grip the camera (it's why they put a camera grip on that side).

You should find your right index finger naturally comes to rest on the shutter release button.

Your elbows will want to magically fly out to the sides at first; consciously remember to tuck them in close to your body. After a while, this becomes second-nature, and having your elbows pointing out will seem alien to you.

Elbow tuck

Soon, you find the four-corner-pinch seems wrong, even when holding a compact camera. You start holding the camera closer to your body and cupping the camera body, rather than holding it at arm's length.

You also begin to tuck your elbows in automatically. If so, congratulations… you are holding your camera in a far more stable manner than before.

There are still times where holding the camera by gripping the sides of the body is useful, such as when taking pictures from above your head - often called the 'Hail Mary' shot by news photographers. But, such times are rare.

Making a stand

Now that you know the right way to hold a camera, what about your stance? Instead of directly facing your subject matter, take a half-step forward with your left foot, put most of your weight on your right leg and bend your knees slightly.

This gives you more support in the direction you are photographing in, and your knees help damp down movement from your upper body.

This right angled stance is also useful if you want to lower your viewpoint. Simply bring your right foot back and drop down onto that knee. Your right knee is now in the same point where your right foot was when standing and you can pan the camera without strain.

It is little wonder that people sometimes call it 'shooting' a picture, because the way you hold a camera is exactly the same way a target shooter holds a rifle.