On Wed, 25 Dec 2002 09:56:07 -0600, Don Stauffer wrote:

>I suspect that motion blur accounts for more degradation than
>diffraction for all hand-held shots. I remember a test done somewhere
>on handheld versus tripod even for 60th and 125th exposures. There WAS
>considerable blur. The tests as I remember used a pretty good film and
>was in either a photo mag or book.

Yes. Even tripod-mounting does not guarantee optimum
results, though... When shooting handheld for best
sharpness, I would take about five frames of the
same thing, and select for sharpness - and even under
difficult conditions, there would usually be one good
frame (and even under ideal conditions, there would
usually be one bad frame...). Some of us *do* care
about image sharpness, and take measures to optimize
it, like avoiding too-small/wide stops, camera-shake,
poor lens samples/types, etc....;-) And, it is possible
to learn how to hold a camera steady during an exposure.
The first step is buying a good 10X magnifyer, and
figuring out which frames are really sharp, and which
ones aren't - and why. Eventually, the percentage
of sharp frames goes up...