A camera tripod can make all the difference in the sharpness and quality of your photographs. The steady base will let you take photos in lower light, at greater depth of field and allow you to work with more complex techniques.

At CoinaPhoto we have pulled together our top tips on choosing and making the most of your tripod so that you can master the most advanced photography to share amongst your friends and networks.

1. The tripod allows you to have a sharper picture when it might have otherwise blurred because of camera shake. Camera shake occurs when you take handheld pictures at slow shutter speeds – one rule of thumb says that for a sharp image you need to use a minimum shutter speed equal to the focal length of the lens you’re using i.e. with a 50mm lens your slowest shutter speed would be 1/50sec, with a 100mm lens you will be able to slow your shutter speed to 1/100sec before needing a tripod or image stabilisation to produce sharp images.

2. The size of your camera’s sensor is another factor to take into account. The smaller your sensor and the longer your lens, the more likely your images are to be blurred without a tripod.

3. When using your tripod make sure you turn off the image stabilisation or vibration reduction on your camera – while they reduce camera shake when shooting handheld, they can cause the camera to vibrate while attached to a tripod.

4. A tripod allows you more control over your camera settings – giving you more options for depth of field; shutter speed, diaphragm, ISO and artistic possibilities. For example, to capture a beautiful landscape you want to use as wide a depth of field as possible, even in low light conditions, which requires a slow shutter speed and a tripod.

5. Other advanced photography techniques made possible using your tripod include night photography – using very long exposures of seconds, minutes or even hours to capture the nocturnal world – panoramas, by creating a number of compositions to stitch together, time lapse and HDR (high dynamic range) light compositions achieved by capturing and combining different exposures of the same subject matter.

6. Buy a good quality tripod. Although it may be relatively heavy, a lightweight tripod won’t provide the density you need for steady shots in windy conditions or for very long exposures. To keep your tripod steady make sure it’s seated securely and limit its height to what you need.

7. When shooting images at long exposure with a tripod you may still get some motion blur that can add an extra mystical aspect to your image. Don’t try to make your image too sharp by using the smallest apertures because they will lead to unsharpness caused by diffraction. To achieve the right exposure try using ND (neutral density) filters instead.

Photos taken with a tripod make for some stunning shots, so why not see if you can make a bit of money from them? Upload your best photography on to CoinaPhoto, the unique social media platform specifically designed for amateur and professional photographers today to see if you can earn some money.

The first 20 photographs that get uploaded on to CoinaPhoto’s Public Library with the tag ‘Tripod Top Tips’ will receive a prize of five gold CoinaPhoto tokens each, ready for you to gift, donate or cash out as you see fit. (Conditions apply)

Here’s a video to show you how it’s done:

For the full terms and conditions of this competition please visit here.