Tripods suck, but your experience with using one doesn't have to. These 6 tips will help you get the most out of every photographer's three-legged nemesis.

As I already mentioned, tripods suck.

They're heavy, cumbersome, and always get in the way.

The cheap ones are useless, the good ones are always too expensive; and no matter how much you keep telling yourself that you will finally use it, it always ends up getting conveniently left behind in the boot of your car.

Carrying a tripod is also a pain - both literally and figuratively; as they're about as comfortable to lug around as a pair of crutches.

But they're a necessary evil if you want to do a bit of night photography at the end of the day.

So if you do end up grudgingly carrying your tripod around town for hours, you may as well get the very best use out of it.

Here are six tips which will ensure that your struggle was worth it.

1 - Extend legs only if absolutely necessary

Tripods come in all lengths and sizes, but the sturdiest tripod is always the one that is never extended at all.

Unless your particular situation requires you to extend your tripod to a particular height, it's best to keep that sucker as compact as possible.

If you do need a bit of extra height, start by extending the fattest sections of the legs first, with the thinnest sections hidden away until the end.

The same goes for the centre column. This is the wobbliest part of any tripod and should be extended at the very end - and only if it is absolutely necessary. The centre column is a single beam, so it does not have three-sided stabilisation like the rest of your tripod.

2 - Turn off Image Stabilisation (IS)

Your modern digital camera may come with some kind of built-in image stabilisation (IS) system; whether it's in the lens, the body itself, or using a digital crop.

Regardless the type, none of them hold a candle to using an actual tripod, so be sure to turn them off.

Humans are not very stable creatures. Because of this, your camera's IS is designed to assume that you are hand-holding your camera, and that there will always be some movement by default.

As such, It's constantly looking for said movement in order to try and cancel it out by floating its stabilising elements in the opposite direction.

If it cannot detect any camera shake, it will either eventually figure out that it's on a tripod and turn itself off; or it will most likely just keep drifting around, always ready to pick up something on either of the three axes.

Either way, this 'floating around' is very noticeable when you shoot long exposures on a tripod, resulting in a photograph ruined by motion blur, so just switch it off to avoid any headaches.

3 - Use 2-second timer (or remote trigger)

No matter how stable your tripod may be, the very act of pressing the shutter button at the start of the exposure is enough to cause a blurry shot.

One of the easiest ways to avoid this is simply to use a two-second timer.

Those two seconds are usually long enough for any vibrations to die down. If not, then try using the 10-second timer, or invest in a remote trigger.

There are also phone apps for your camera which have a remote trigger option. They're usually a bit of a pain to pair up and use, but when they do work as intended, they can be very handy.

4 - Remove, or secure your camera's strap

On windy days, your camera's strap can flap around like a sail, leading to blurry photos. So be sure to wrap it securely around one of the tripod legs before shooting, or remove it altogether.

5 - Set your camera to base ISO if shooting long exposures

One of the best things about using a tripod is that it actually allows you to get some of the sharpest and cleanest photos that your camera can manage, without having to rely on ISO signal amplification.

This is done by setting your camera to its base (lowest) ISO value. For most cameras it's ISO 100, but some use ISO 80, 50, or even 200.

When you're shooting at base ISO, the only variables you need to think about are your shutter speed and aperture.

Yes, you will be limited by how fast your shutter speed can be, but one of the main reasons for using a tripod in the first place is to be able to shoot sharp long exposures.

6 - Use Manual focus when shooting at night

There's nothing more annoying when shooting long exposures on a tripod, than discovering that your photo was out of focus. This is especially frustrating if your exposure ran into minutes, or sometimes hours. This is even more of an issue if you're shooting late at night and your camera's autofocus system has trouble 'seeing' your subject in the dark.

The best way to minimise this, is to use manual focus.

Simply switch your lens from 'AF' (autofocus) to 'MF' (manual focus).

Then, use the 'loupe' option on your camera to digitally zoom 5x or 10x into the focus square, allowing you to make very accurate manual adjustments to the sharpness of your subject.

Final thoughts

Shooting on a tripod fundamentally changes the way you think about your photography. You are no longer relying on many of your camera's modern features to help you get the shot. Instead, you're going back in time to when cameras were fully manual, and you were doing all of the thinking yourself.

This can be very rewarding if it works out, and may be enough motivation for you to go out with your tripod in the first place.

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Happy shooting!