Tripods

You should use a tripod to prevent camera-shake in poor light or when taking photographs with long exposures. However, tripods have other less obvious but equally important uses. They keep the camera locked in a fixed position while you make careful adjustments to the composition and arrangements of subjects in the frame, and they leave your hands free for adjusting props, handling accessories or directing your model.

Tripods come with either ball-and-socket heads or pan-and-tilt heads. Those with ball-and-socket heads are the lighter and more compact of the two types, and very much quicker to use. However, they are not very good when you need to make careful adjustments, or if you need to pan the camera to follow a moving subject.