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Show Common answers to uncommon situations By HOLT CONFER Copley News Service Somebody asked me the other day if it was necessary neces-sary to carry a tripod on a trip. It depends on what type of pictures you intend to take. But if you haye" room for a tripod, since, you don't have to buy it Big Macs or register it as an extra person at the motel, you might as well take it with you. Most night shots are impossible im-possible without some type of camera support, and even scenics done with a stable platform beneath your camera will look better bet-ter than the hand-held shots. And not just because you've eliminated camera movement with your tripod. tri-pod. Using a tripod makes you slow down your picture-taking activity to the point where you have time to ask yourself some rather important questions. Are all the camera's controls set properly? Are there parts of the scene that need to receive special exposure consideration consider-ation because they are excessively ex-cessively light or dark? Is the picture framed properly? Is the vantage point as good as it could be, or would the shot work better by moving left, right, back or forward? Are the horizons straight, or are boats sailing sail-ing uphill and the buildings falling out of the picture? How about filters: Would a polarizer eliminate elimi-nate some glare and increase in-crease the color saturation? satura-tion? f i- When you hand-hold a camera, it's too easy to step up, peek through the i viewfinder and press the shutter without asking yourself questions like that, which would probably ; improve your results. When you talk about tripods, tri-pods, it's not uncommon to conjure up images of cable releases. And while this shutter-pressing mecha- 1 nism appears to be a rather simple accessory, there are some things you need to think about when you use it. First of all, make certain it's fastened tightly to your shutter release button. It only takes a few turns to make a tight connection so don't make any halfhearted attempts at making the fit secure. Second, when you use a cable release, make cer tain there's a curve in it should you stretch it tight, chances are you will move the camera when the picture pic-ture is taken. Keeping a curve in the cable release will take up any inadvertent inadvert-ent hand movement the "moment the shutter is released. re-leased. One v problem that plagues pla-gues many photographers after they return from a trip is remembering the names of all those places they've visited. There are a couple simple solutions. Hotels, motels, visitors centers and local travel agencies are filled with brochures. In fact it's darn near impossible to travel someplace that hasn't been covered in some sort of descriptive brochure. Pick up everything you can relating re-lating to the area you're photographing chances are there will be enough al- ready in print to thoroughly thorough-ly refresh your memory. I carry a little notebook and jot down whatever I need to remember buildings build-ings streets, people's names, animals, etc. and relate the notes to the number of the film cartridge car-tridge I'm using. My memory mem-ory is still keen enough so that if I have a note that I've photographed a wattled wat-tled crane, I don't get the picture confused with the girl in a bikini pit, oranges. Your memory stab invaluable in placing if: ture, so you are proti safe in just making x; about the technical Ie tures you're not famL; with. Of course, these re all the problems asm L with traveling and pier-taking, pier-taking, but with a cot f" I have to dispense into I tion in small doses I |