There are several things you can do to get sharper photos with your long lens. But what if we want to go even further? This lens hack might be a bit crazy, but it’s the best I’ve seen as it actually works and works on location. Learn how to take sharper telephoto photos.
In my latest video on YouTube, I show how I prepared to set up the telephoto lens to get sharper photos. The problem with long-lens photography is that the longer you use the longer focal length, the harder it is to avoid the problem of camera shake.
The viewing angle is smaller, and each wind and each vibration has a larger impact on the shaking. To compensate for that, we usually decrease the shutter speed by increasing the ISO or by opening the aperture. And this works, but with limitations. We wanted to choose an aperture that resulted in the depth of field we needed for our composition, and we wanted to remove ISO noise.
Weaknesses of Tele Lenses
For example, with an extremely long focal length of 600mm, the angle of view is about four degrees, which is not much. A shake as small as half a degree would lead to a full-blown disaster. This is why I am always used to taking pictures with a silent shutter when I am above 400mm. And if the wind comes to the game, I’m always happy to have image stabilization on my 70-200mm lens. Image stabilization works great. But there are cases where it simply doesn’t work, where you can do whatever you want, but you get a blurry photo due to shake.
Weaknesses of tripods
The connection between a long lens and a tripod sometimes involves a mount. This is a good thing as it gave us the flexibility to rotate the lens around to fine-tune the composition. But from a mechanical point of view, we have to consider that the lens mount acts like an anchor point, and in the end we get a kind of leverage effect. The longer the lens, the more the wind blows. To get rid of that, we need a second anchor point.
Build the second anchor point
We needed a chain that was seven to ten feet in length, a carabiner, an Arca-Swiss mount, a screw with lugs, and a wire cutter. At the heart of this camera hack is the chain, and the idea is to basically attach our camera to the chain. This sounds crazy, but again, it works. All we have to do is fix the carabiner on the chain and fix the camera mount on the carabiner using the lug screw. With that and our long lenses, we go beyond the realm of photography.
Using strings in the field
I don’t use this trick all the time, just when I need to capture sharp ISO 100 close-ups from a mountain miles away, even in windy situations. And it was so easy to put the parts together and easy to use, I still attached my lens to the tripod as usual, then I attached the chain to my camera.
If you thought attaching a leash to the camera was crazy, wait for the next step: it’s all about stepping gently on the leash for a little bit of tension, resulting in additional stability of the whole camera. system set. But be careful here: applying too much pressure can break your camera and damage your lens mount or camera body. In the video mentioned above you will see my stress level towards Sony a7R IV with me Sony 200-600mm lenses without risk. This works great and I get beautifully sharp photos with ISO 100, where I usually need ISO 640 or even higher.
I also brought a cord cutter to my photo shoot, as you should shorten the leash as needed. Ultimately, it depends on the height of the tripod and the height of the photographer. I decided on a length of seven feet, but I recommend trying it out for yourself.
For a detailed look at how I put the string together, how I used it in the field, and what else you can do to get sharper photos, check out the video above. And don’t hesitate to leave a comment below this article if you also have experience in useful camera hacks.
