You’ll Need a Cable Release

After you’ve gone through all the expense and trouble of getting a good, solid, sturdy tripod to keep your camera absolutely positively still, you’re not going to go and mess all that up by pressing the shutter button on your camera, right? Because if you do press the shutter button with your finger, it will invariably shake the camera just enough to keep you from having a really tack-sharp shot. I know, I know . . . you’re probably thinking, “I’ll be really gentle when I press it,” which is great because then it will shake less when you press it, but it’s still gonna shake. So, why not get a cable release? You plug a thin cable into the small socket on the side or front of your camera that was designed just for this purpose, and then when you press the shutter button on the end of this cable, it takes the shot without you moving the camera whatsoever. Now, you can either go that route, or for most cameras these days, you can get an inexpensive wireless remote that will fire the shutter for you. You can get these as inexpensively as around $14 (that is, unless you have a really expensive camera, in which case, the camera manufacturers figure you must have a lot of money, so they make you pay a whole lot more for a shutter release that does the exact same thing as the $14 one. I know, it stinks). Anyway, the day you buy your tripod, go ahead and get some sort of a cable release/wireless trigger, too. This is pretty essential.