When I’m scouting for my photography workshops, I travel as light as possible. I often have to visit 5 sites a day, sometimes more, to determine the best spots for our group. This often includes a fair amount of hiking.

I never pack a tripod for these trips. I don’t want to carry one, and I don’t have the time to use it. On a recent scouting trip for our upcoming Redwoods Photography Workshop, I worked with a Nikon Zf, 28-400mm f/4-8 zoom lens, and my iPhone 15 Pro Max. This rig allowed me to work quickly and flow seamlessly from one location to another.

I used Auto ISO on the Zf, allowing it to climb as high as 25,600. The lighting in the redwoods can be quite dim, plus, I wanted to shoot at f/8 to provide some depth of field with that full-frame sensor. (Fortunately, I never had to go above ISO 9,000!)

The Zf has sensor-based image stabilization, which helped with sharpness, especially when racking out the telephoto to 300mm or more. My shutter speeds were typically between 1/15th and 1/125th of a second.

When I reviewed my images, I noticed that many of them were in the ISO 2,500 - 2,800 range. Once upon a time, we would never have considered such settings for landscape photography. But honestly, the RAW files looked great and were quite editable.

The ISO climbed as high as 9,000 for some of the images. (This isn’t something that I would normally allow!) But I have to say, they looked just fine.

For the above Trillium Flower shot, I applied Luminar Neo’s Noise Reduction while editing. I had noticed some grain in the background that was a bit distracting. Luminar did a great job of eliminating it.

I’m not advocating tossing your tripod in the trash. But, when you’re in situations without it, and you have a camera capable of climbing the ISO ladder, take the shot!

It’s a lot easier to eliminate noise than to fix a lack of sharpness due to camera shake. And sometimes it’s nice just to have fun taking pictures.

All photos by Derrick Story using a Nikon Zf with a Nikkor Z 28-400mm zoom lens, handheld.