How do I film a steady handheld shot without a gimbal?

Handheld footage looks unusable mostly because of vertical bounce from walking and rotational wobble from unsupported arms. Both can be reduced enormously without any equipment.

Step by step

1. Bring the camera in to your body.Arms extended make your hands the end of a long lever, and every tremor is magnified. Elbows against your ribs, camera close to your chest, using the screen rather than the viewfinder if that keeps it closer.
2. Use your body as the suspension.Knees slightly bent, weight low, and walk heel-to-toe placing each foot deliberately. The bounce in handheld footage comes from the impact of a normal walking stride travelling straight up the spine.
3. Walk sideways or backwards for a smoother move.Crossing your feet in a slow sideways step, or walking backwards while someone guides you, produces markedly less vertical movement than walking forwards. It is the standard trick and it works.
4. Use a wide lens.A wide angle magnifies movement far less than a telephoto. The same wobble that is invisible at 24mm is unwatchable at 200mm. Get closer with a wide lens rather than standing back with a long one.
5. Turn on stabilisation and understand its limits.Optical and in-body stabilisation remove small tremor very well and cannot remove a stride. Electronic stabilisation crops into the frame to compensate, so you lose some field of view and sometimes some quality.
6. Watch for the warping artefact.Strong electronic stabilisation can produce a wobbling, jelly-like distortion of straight lines, especially with a wide lens. If footage looks like it is breathing, that is the stabiliser working too hard — reduce it and improve the technique instead.
7. Film with headroom for stabilisation in editing.Editing software can stabilise footage, and it does so by cropping and moving the frame. Compose slightly wider than the final framing so the crop does not lose anything you need. Filming at 4K and finishing at 1080p gives generous room.
8. Film at a higher frame rate for moving shots.50 or 60 frames per second, slowed slightly in editing, both smooths the movement and gives the stabiliser more frames to work with. It is a common trick for walking shots.
9. Improvise support.A strap pulled taut against the camera's weight, leaning against a wall or door frame, resting on a railing or a car roof, or sitting down with elbows on knees. Any contact with something solid removes more shake than any technique.
10. Know when to stop moving.The most common fix for unwatchable handheld footage is to put the camera down and shoot it static. A locked-off shot always looks deliberate; a marginal moving one rarely does.

Tips

• A cheap monopod used as a stabiliser, with the foot just off the ground, damps a surprising amount of movement and packs down small.
• Breathe out and hold at the start of a short handheld shot, exactly as you would for a slow-shutter photograph.
• Straight architectural lines expose wobble ruthlessly. Handheld footage in a landscape hides it much better than handheld footage in a corridor.

Common mistakes

• Holding the camera or phone out at arm's length — It maximises the leverage of every small movement of your hands and shoulders. Bringing it in to the chest reduces the visible wobble immediately.
• Zooming in and then walking — A long focal length multiplies angular movement. Walk closer with a wide lens instead — the shot will also look better.

If it doesn't work

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