After all professional tripods are heavy, expensive, and more dangerous to the general public and, therefore to law enforcement, than firearms. (photography humor)

You have spent all or most of your photographic equipment budget on your camera body and lens. Therefore, all of your photography should be perfect. Bad news. You have only just begun.

• It comes down to how honest and critical your self-evaluation will be. Typically beginning students will tolerate significant flaws in their photographic strategy – like blurry images. However, as a student of photography gains sophistication, they grow weary of “soft” images due to motion blur.

• They recognize, viewing their image on a quality monitor, a lack of resolving power when they employ too slow a shutter speed, or too narrow a depth-of-field (wide aperture), or both. They learn to distinguish between missed focus and the aforementioned shortcomings.

• They admit to themselves that there are times when a slow shutter speed is necessary or desirable. They have mastered the inverse focal length rule (1/focal length) which undeniably stipulates when a shutter speed is too slow for a given focal length choice while handholding the lens.