You probably know the situation: You are inside a beautiful old church, it’s quite dark and you must not use a tripod but you want that interior shot. So you increase the ISO number as much as you dare, but the exposure time is still so long that you fear camera shake. Here is a little trick that may help in such situations.

1. Set your camera to continous shooting mode

That may sound silly as your subject doesn’t move at all (if a church starts moving, leave immediately, there is probably an earthquake). But just ignore the bewildered looks of your fellow photographers. You will see that the continous mode does make a lot of sense.

2. Breathe in

You know how to do that, so this doesn’t need any explanations.

3. Breathe out

Again, you know how that works.

4. Don’t breathe

You do this at your own risk!

5. Press the shutter button

Let the camera take 5 or 6 pictures in rapid succession.

6. Select the image with the least blur

Generally, the third or fourth image of the series is the sharpest.

This procedure has often worked for us. The next time you need to shoot in low light without a tripot you should try it.

Oh, don’t forget to start breathing again after you took the images …