How to shoot a steady handheld video?
When I started filmmaking, I couldn't afford high-end cameras or stabilisers to get smooth handheld footage. However, I adapted and found that shooting handheld gave me the creative freedom to be nimble, have lightweight luggage, and overall be a run n gun filmmaker! After making lots of videos on youtube a lot of people started to ask “how do you shoot a handheld video?” In this guide, I will go over my favourite techniques! I hope they help you out. I have a video that supports this article as well, so please check that after reading through. So, are you ready to shoot without a gimbal and love handheld video? Let's get steady footage!
1) Use a camera strap: Lockout your elbows + push out using the strap
Usually, when we photographers are out shooting we have a camera strap with us. If you don’t take one with you, maybe you will reconsider after trying it out!
Using a camera strap around your neck and having both hands on the camera body allows you to have 3 points of contact. To make this more effective, have your elbows tucked in to avoid any small jitters: You will basically be a Human Gimbal.
Now your footage will be smooth, not shaky.
2) Pan with your body! (Not your arms)
Now that we have good stabilization, it is time to get natural and stable movement:
Naturally, when we pan with our camera bodies, we tend to move our arms, STOP.
Keep your elbows locked in just like in step 1 and rotate your hips, your whole upper body should move as one. (Still keep the camera body pushed and locked out.)
This will result in a smooth and natural steady motion. You can even rock and tilt, whatever you do, do not move your arms.
Now, this is the time to mention ibis. I personally have not tried ibis much but from various sample footage online. I have seen when panning slowly ibis can actually make your footage a bit wobbly, this is because ibis is meant to counter the wobble. If there is no wobble, the camera may get confused. This honestly depends on your camera brand so my recommendation is to do a test before committing to this technique on a real shoot. You may want to switch your ibis off if you find this awkward result. If you don’t have ibis, you have nothing to worry about. Overall, this is just something to watch out for.
3) Lean against something
Now I understand that getting a steady shot with a strap will work for everybody. Hell, sometimes I don’t even have a camera strap. So, keeping your camera tucked into your body and leaning against a wall or anything comfortable will definitely help you out on a spontaneous day of shooting. We have a few examples in the support video, go check it out!
4) The Ninja Walk
Smooth tracking shots without a gimbal? Now, this is not something I will recommend as your first/go-to call to action. However, if circumstances call for it, you can try the ninja walk.
Simply crouch slightly and walk heel to toe. Whilst doing this you can also apply the strap technique (if you have one). Pop a bit of warp stabilizer or whatever software you use and you should have a decent tracking shot! In my support video, it worked out fine. But like I said, this is not my first recommendation because this takes a lot of practice!
5) A Wide-angle lens
Quite simply, a wide-angle lens really helps to make those small “micro-jitters” seem less apparent. So whether you shoot in slow motion or apply a warp stabiliser that crops in slightly, you have given yourself 3 areas where you can save your footage.
Just to recap: a wide-angle lens helps with the following: Micro jitters, slow motion, and warp stabiliser.
6) Warp Stabiliser
This one is self-explanatory, whether you are using Premiere Pro, Final Pro X, or DaVinci Resolve. They all have decent software stabilisation. So, if you followed the first few steps and it is still not quite perfect, you have now given yourself a really really good chance of allowing the software to just finesse your footage. Usually, software stabilization just turns shaky handheld footage into jelly which is no good. So, prepping your footage stabilization success is key.
You have probably realised by now that not one tip solely does the trick (maybe if you are advanced and just needed a little reminder), it is about orchestrating them together to your circumstance and project.
7) Slow Motion
I left the final tip for last as it is probably the easiest yet most underrated: Slow Motion! If you are shooting broll for a project, slow-motion can help salvage a good chunk of usable footage for your project. You might only need a few seconds and then boom, slap on some software stabilization if you REALLY need and you are golden!
Especially if you have followed the previous steps, you may not even need software stabilization.
(Personally, for my own broll and travel videos shot in 100fps or 50fps, I would rarely use Warp Stabilizer when applying the human gimbal techniques we discussed earlier)
Obviously, if you are shooting a talking head in real-time, this is practically useless. But nonetheless, I had to mention this tip. If you are shooting a casual travel video, I highly recommend just shooting a lot of it in 50/60fps for plenty of options back in the editing suite.
We have come to the end of this article/blog and I sincerely hope you have learned something new in regards to handheld filmmaking. All these tips are techniques that I have learned and applied successfully over the last few years when filmmaking on a low budget. Furthermore, even when it came to my corporate high paid projects, these tips allowed me to keep my camera bag light and be really quick to set up for shoots. Overall, these techniques are a win.
If you have any questions regarding handheld filmmaking please do not hesitate to email me at haris@haychdigital.com | Instagram
If you wish you to see how I apply handheld filmmaking in a real-world behind the scenes video: