Don't Hold it Like This

In this show there were cameras and lenses at every booth, it seemed.  What is great is that you can ask to see a particular camera and a certain lens and then hold that setup and look through it and get a sense of how that combination feels.  When I saw this gentleman hollding this camera with a long, and relatively heavy telephoto lens, I had to smile and so I took this photograph. Why did I smile?

A few years ago when Stan was preparing to teach a college class of beginning photography he asked if he could come out and do some photographs of me,  Showing the wrong way and the right way of holding a camera in certain circumstanced.  So this is NOT the way to hold a camera ever!  Especially if you have a telephoto lens on it.  A lens like that is heavy and your arms will get tired and you will not be able to hold the camera as steady as you would doing it the right way!

When you hold the camera and lens this way,  you actually hold the camera tightly to your face, and then you jam your elbows into your chest, so you sort of turn you arms and head into a tripod and the camera is so much steadier!  I hadn't noticed this, but Stan has said he sees people doing this the wrong way all the time!  So when I saw the gentleman at the photo show, I just had to take his photograph.