In article <32b18dda.1863905@news.cco.net>, jlsuther@cco.net says...

>I think most of us have heard of the old rule to not shoot handheld
>photos at shutter speeds lower than 1/focal length. It's probably
>older than most of us. My question is about how the rule would apply,
>if at all, to the use of zoom lenses. I have a 75-300 telephoto zoom
>that's pretty front-heavy, especially when zoomed out to 300mm. In
>fact, I don't feel comfortable shooting at any hand-holdable shutter
>speed with it and use a tripod instead. Is the old rule no good for
>our modern zoom lenses? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

At best, it is a "guide", not a rule... For myself, I find that it
results in giving too slow a minimum shutter speed recommendation
at the very long end, and is unnecessarily conservative at the short
end (1/500th is good enough for only about 1 in 4 sharp frames with a
500mm hand-held, but 1/2 second is easy with an 8mm fisheye hand-held).
Also, your steadiness, and the physical length and weight of the lens
affect the minimum reasonably safe shutter speed (while the light/compact
500mm mirror may be reliably hand held at 1/1000th minimum, the big/heavy
400mm f3.5 is fairly easily hand-held at 1/125th [briefly - until arms
tire!] due to its greater mass and length, which slow vibrations - same
with my 80-200mm f2.8, holdable at 200mm at 1/60th, though my short, light 200mm f4 prime generally requires shutter speeds above 1/250th).
BTW, one reason (among many! ;-) I like my 20mm so much: I can hand-hold
it in almost any light (1/15th is easy, 1/8th fairly reliable, 1/4 second
is possible [with "sharpness brackets" {extra frames shot to get a sharp
one}], and still use optimum apertures for good optical performance and
great DOF.
Hope This Helps