There's a lot of great opportunities to use your tripod with the self timer. You don't have to have a tripod quite extensive as this, but it comes in handy to have one when you're going to be doing pictures of yourself, but also in other instances where you may need a long exposure. For example, we talked about shooting at the aquarium so you've turned you're flash off but it's low light so you need the shutter to open longer in order to capture the image. So, now you need to stabilize your camera with the tripod and another way to avoid what they call camera shake is by using the self timer. So, because you've pressed the button, set your focus, and released it, the self timer goes off and it doesn't move the camera around at all. That can be used for all kinds of longer exposure tricks like shooting what they call light painting. You could leave the shutter open and use your flashlight to paint in front or different things like that. Another time is anytime that you don't want there to be camera shake and most cameras give you a little bit of a warning, oh this is gonna be a time that you might get blurred images because your cameras shaking. You can just use the self timer and my self timer, it doesn't have to be a twenty second or a ten second, this one has an option of two seconds so if it's something like that where you don't need to run into the picture you can just set it on the two second self timer. Another time that you might need to stabilize your camera with a tripod and use the self timer is when you're really zoomed in and that can even be in movie mode on these types of cameras. When you move in a lot, any little tiny bit of movement really affects what's going on with the camera. So, by using the self timer, again the shutter goes off without any camera movement at all. There's some other great features with the self timer. If you're doing a group shot and say you've got your two year old in it or whatever, a lot of these cameras, when they're on self timer, they have a flashing light that helps keep a child's attention. They may also beep. Mine has, you can go online and get other different sounds for your camera. So, for example, I think I've got one where you've got a chicken clucking or a werewolf howling and that can help everyone including the children look at the camera. Plus, there's usually a blinking light so it helps people know when you're going to take a picture and you're less likely to get them blinking during the picture. So, the self timer would be a lot of fun to do your own little self portrait. Make sure you use that feature. It's a lot of fun and it can really help you out.
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