For whatever reason, new photographers assume they need a tripod and seem to set their cameras up atop them.  I often then watch these new shooters struggle and fumble to get the camera positioned in a way that will allow them to take a photo framed how they want it to be.  Tripods have a place in photography, but they should be a tool called upon when needed, not a must-have that’s always used.

This photo was hand-held, 400ISO, f/2.8 at about 1/2 second shutter speed.  The photographer did everything they could to capture this night scene, but it failed.  Raising the ISO increases the sensitivity, shooting at f/2.8 allows the maximum amount of light to come in and a shutter speed of 1/2 second allowed massive amounts of light to come in, so why is it blurry?

Generally speaking, you want a shutter speed to be as fast as your focal length.  Shooting at 50mm, you need a shutter speed at least 1/50th.  Anything slower and you’ll get camera shake, seen here in this photo.  The fix for this situation would have been a tripod.  Had a tripod been utilized the photo would be totally sharp and have a focal point, here it’s just blurred.

Nothing else technically could have been done, no other setting utilized, to make this photo any more appealing.  A tripod should have been used. The flash was not fired and it would not have helped, since most on-camera flashes only have a working distance of 10-15 feet.

Even a hotshoe mounted flash would have given less then desirable results.  Flashes work not by illuminating subject matter, but by the amount of light reflected off of them and bounced back to the camera.  It would be near impossible to get equal light from left to right side of this image and reflected back off everything evenly.

This photo has nearly the same settings as the previous photo and has nearly the same results.  Blurry, no real focal point and overall, an image that probably would have been deleted before even getting transferred to a computer.  The rules for the previous photo do not apply here though.

This photo was taken inside a coffee house, there simply is no room for a tripod to be setup.  The subject matter however is well within the maximum working distance of a flash, and should have been used.  In this example, a tripod should not have been used, however a different camera setting could have been chosen for a better result.

There are no set in stone rules to when you should and shouldn’t use a tripod.  If you follow the general rule of thumb for shutter speed equaling focal distance or faster, the tipping point for whether you need a tripod should be easier to distinguish.