Handheld Techniques - Understanding Cinematography
- Tea L
- Aug 7
- 5 min read
Updated: Sep 4
This will aim to be a short primer for proper handheld shooting techniques, to show/remind you how to get the best results shooting handheld general but also panning/tilting, shooting low angle, walking and using the 3 point technique.
What is challenging about shooting handheld?
The essential challenge when shooting handheld is to be smooth, not to be a rock-steady human tripod, but to be smooth. This is primarily, a question of how you hold your body, engage your muscles and breathe. So let’s talk about it!
First, turn on image stabilization
Image stabilization, also called Steadyshot by Sony, is an amazing technology and you should make sure that you have it active on your camera when shooting handheld. This will manage the more minor shakes that occur as you hold the camera as well as smoothing out some jerkyness in your movements. This is commonly found in the camera Fn menu (quick menu.)
3 point technique - the secret to good handheld
The first thing you have to tackle when shooting handheld is shakes in your hands. With larger heavier cameras shakes are often the result of prolonged straining to hold the camera's weight. Thankfully, we will be working with small lightweight cameras (relatively speaking). However, in this case, your muscles can end up being overactive making for noticeable twitches in your footage.
The easiest way to steady this out is to establish three points of contact with the camera, hence 3 point technique. The first two points of this technique are fairly obvious.
One of your hands should be on the grip of the camera, this also give you access to the dials of the camera.
Your other hand should likely be on the lens of the camera, permitting you to turn the focus wheel.
The third point can vary depending on the shot and circumstance, the point of using a third point of contact is to stabilize your arm muscles further and reduce the effect of strain or twitching.
The Eye Piece: If your camera has a viewfinder and eye piece, you can use it like a classic photographer. Pressing it to your face makes your face the third point of contact.
Your chest: This can work in two ways. (1) you point the rear screen upwards and press it to your ribs or chest (not your belly as your breathing will affect your belly more). (2) flip your rear screen upwards, but instead of pressing the screen agains you, tighten your elbows into your sides. This provides extra stabilization even if it isn’t technically 3 points.
The neck / shoulder strap: This is my personal favourite trick, especially when doing pans or walking. Position your neck strap around your neck or behind a shoulder. Tighten the strap enough so that at maximum extension your arms can be in a slightly tensed position. Then when you are going to shoot, press forward lightly with your arms to tension the shoulder strap around your neck or shoulder. This allows you to use the strap like a third point of contact, stabilizing and reducing strain on your arms.
Oh also both of the following sections are going to be easier if you use three point technique and/or get used to using the camera strap version.
Smooth pans and tilts start from the core
To achieve smooth handheld pans and tilts, you want to combine the 3 point technique and using your core muscles. I find the camera strap based three point better for this than using the eyepiece.
Now what you want to do here, is establish your tension with your camera strap and find your starting framing. To get the movement smooth, you want to position your body so your legs remain planted and then turn or tilt primarily using your core.
This will inherently limit how much you ground you can cover, but it will keep the movement consistent. If you need to pan more than your core travel permits, I would try to compensate more with my arms before I move my feet.
Smooth out that walk
As a caveat, walking completely smoothly with a camera handheld is nearly impossible unless you have some assistive technology like a gimbal, flycam, steadicam, etc. But even then it requires a lot of skill.
What I can offer you are some tips to mitigate unwanted effects.
Roll from the heel to the ball of your foot. You want your footsteps to be fluid rather than stompy.
Keep a little bend in your knees. This gives your body a little more ability to stabilize.
Move slower, but not too slow. Going fast is automatically going to be bumpier, but going very slow actually makes movements much more taxing, so try to find a happy medium for your body.
Walk in step with your subject. If you are tracking or following another person who is walking, keeping step with them will allow you to produce the illusion of smoothness. While the edges of the frame may still be bouncing, they will see to be more steady since your bobbing and rising is in sync.
Use a wider lens. If you have access to a standard lens or ideally a wide angle lens, these will reduce the visual effects of walking. This is because the changes in the edges of your framing will be less exaggerated then when heavily zoomed in.
Shooting low angles handheld
Shooting low angle can be a bit easier in some ways, as long as you have a top handle for your camera. (Luckily both of our camera kits have these.)
To get a smooth result, in my experience, the way to go is to bend from the waist engaging your core to get to the height you need. Then the trick is to have a tight / first grip on the camera handle while keeping your shoulder loose to smooth out the movement.
So you should feel tension in your fingers and forearm, possibly in your tricep as well keeping your arm straight. But if you lightly swing your body your should be loose enough to allow the camera to rock back and forth like a boat at sea.
This works because the muscles you are keeping loose in your shoulder produce larger slower moves when they help you stabilize, as the pivot point is farther from the camera itself, which produces movements that are harder for the viewer to detect.
If you tighten your shoulder and loose your grip by comparison, the pivot point is now the handle of the camera itself as opposed to all they way at your shoulder, so small movements can now produce much more pronounced swings.
Additionally, having a slightly heavier camera in this kind of situation can actually be helpful as it gives your arm muscles added resistance.
It's all just practice... and knowing your limits
The more your practice with these techniques the easier and more intuitive they become, it’s literally muscle memory. But also let’s note that your muscles will tire out over the course of a shoot day and depending on your level of muscle, how well rested you are and how heavy your camera is your mileage will vary.
Oh and don't drink too much coffee
That large double double from Timmies may keep you awake at the end of a long shoot date, but it may also literally give you a certain degree of the camera shakes from the caffeine. (Same thing for the energy drink connoisseurs out there.) So, if you are going to do a lot of handheld camera you want to rest up well the day before rather than depend on caffeine, if possible.
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