Pennies It is amazing to me what even the most affordable of cameras can do these days. All kinds of scene and face recognition, image stabilization and built in HDR effects just to name a few. Another feature where there have been enormous advances is in the area of low light/ high ISO performance. This has gotten so good that people find that they can hand hold and get a shot that would have normally required a tripod in some really low light situations. That is all well and good, but there are still times when you really do need a tripod. 

The image of the pennies at right is such a shot. It was shot with a 105mm f2.8 macro lens, and the exposure time was 30 seconds. This falls pretty much outside the boundaries of what most of us would consider a hand held shot. So yes, it required a tripod.

Macro photography has very limited depth of field, so to get the amount of focus I did in this shot, I had to stop down to f20. Even stopped down that small, you can still see that focus drops off by the time we get 2 or 3 coins down. Very shallow indeed! 

So yes, the need for a tripod in modern photography has certainly been reduced, but not eliminated. Especially when we consider that the new batch of cameras are getting really high resolution sensors. This is requiring artists to almost shoot as if they were shooting medium format and that approach has a whole different set of concerns. Then you not only use a tripod, but you wonder if the mirror slap is going to blur the image. 

What is old is new again...