Are Tripods Still Necessary?

Women's Hats.  Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T2; 16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 22mm; 1/210th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

With the capabilities of today's sensors along with their internal image processors in digital cameras, we now have the ability to create photographs at ISOs that were never before possible.  In the past, if even possible the images shot with high ISOs looked so bad that you didn't want to show them to anyone.  Today, we can easily photograph using ISO 6400 or even higher (ISOs in the hundreds of thousands!) in some cameras, reduce the noise using the latest software such as Topaz DeNoise AI and make lovely images.  

Being able to photograph at such high ISOs and still make good quality images has the benefit of allowing us to leave our tripods at home.  After all, who wants to carry around a bulky and sometimes heavy tripod if we don't have to?  Using very high ISOs, we can now increase the shutter speeds sufficiently to eliminate subject movement and camera movement using  handholdable speeds.  Conversely, using high ISOs we can increase depth of field dramatically if it benefits our creative vision.

Now add in image stabilization, either in-body-image-stabilization (IBIS) and/or in-lens image stabilization, and we can hand hold our digital cameras at slower shutter speeds than ever before!  Isn't technology a wonderful partner to our creative endeavors?  With all of this new technology we can banish our tripods to the nether regions!

No so fast.  All that technology is well and good, but there are times when a tripod is absolutely necessary.  Or almost absolutely.  When we have very long exposures in astrophotography or by attaching very dark neutral density filters, etc., it is hard to get around using a tripod.  Hand holding several second to several minute exposures is near impossible.

There is another reason why you may want to use a tripod.  A reason I hear almost no one talking about.  It's not just about achieving a sufficient shutter speed or adequate depth of field.  Every time you raise your camera's ISO (increasing gain or the audio analogy is turning up the volume), you reduce your sensor's ability to record a wide dynamic range.  When you see figures quoting a particular camera's dynamic range, I've never seen that quote for other than base or native ISO.  So, if your camera is said to have a dynamic range of 14 stops, that is for your camera's base or native ISO.  That could be ISO 64, ISO 100 or ISO 200, depending upon the sensor and manufacturer.  As soon as you start to raise that ISO dial, you start losing dynamic range.

Here is a chart with some figures for some popular cameras that I constructed out of the data on the website Photons to Photos, largely considered a scientifically derived, credible site often quoted in articles, videos and around the Internet.

Dynamic Range versus ISO of some of today's popular cameras.  (click to enlarge)

If you look at the chart above, for about every camera listed, by the time you raise your ISO to 6400, you have lost almost half of the dynamic range available at base ISO.  If you to higher ISOs, you lose even more.  That is a serious issue if you are working in low light and are trying to capture shadow and highlight detail in an already high contrast scene.  Raising your ISO to achieve shutter speeds that will allow you to handhold your camera but the sacrifice is dynamic range.  That may fine for some images but cripple your intent with others.  You must be aware and take this into account when deciding whether or not to take a tripod.  What kind of scenes will you likely encounter?

Yes, you can get away without a tripod by using higher ISOs, but the trade off is loss of that coveted dynamic range you paid a lot of money to get.

As for me, I don't like carrying a tripod but I will use it if necessary.  I always carry two in my vehicle so one is available whenever I find a situation that allows me to capture a scene and preserve maximum quality.  My suggestion is to think ahead and be prepared.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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