Sometimes we are being caught unprepared for the conditions, when we are taking pictures. There are a lot of conditions that can surprise us, like a bad weather etc. But i’ll focus on seeing a nice scene in a low light environment when you don’t have your tripod with you.

Imagine you forgot to take your tripod with you, saw a nice scene to capture and light is not enough to take picture holding your camera without shaking it. What can you do to not shake your camera while you are taking the picture?

• You can put your camera on a table, wall, car or something that is available around you, press the top of your camera gently and then take the shot.
• If you have a bag or backpack with you put it on the ground or on a table, wall etc. find the best composition by looking form the camera’s visor, set the timer on, and wait, your camera will do the rest.
• Maybe you don’t have an option and you have to take the shot, by holding your camera in your hands. In this condition, switch to manual mode,choose a high ISO value (ISO 1600), set the aperture to a low f value (as low as possible), and set the shutter speed to 1/30 sec (just enough for prevent shaking - if you stay still) than take the shot, hopefully you’ll get some results.
• Also in semi manual mode ,decrease the exposure level a couple of notches until it points -2 and use RAW as storage media type. Take the shots they will be darker than normal but since you took the shots in RAW you will be able to change exposure level on your computer. (of course this is only available for digital cameras). When you are at home, download the pictures from your camera open the tool that you use for processing the RAW images (Software CD that comes with your camera, contains one of these.) and you can increase the exposure level back or even higher like +2. Also i should warn you about grain/noise, noise will increase as you increase the exposure level.