Is it common now for the camera to be held in just one hand? I have not seen many other [D]SLR photographers in recent years (last time was 5 years ago), so I don't know the answer. What is the practice among PF members?
I learned photography at my father's knee and he would cradle his Rolleiflex in both hands, and use both to hold his 35mm Minolta SRT101. Grips were unheard of except for heavy MF cameras, but even then both hands were expected - the Pentax 6x7 grip was on the opposite side from the shutter button. Old camera manuals told you to hold with both hands, or it went without saying that you should.
Then camera grips became, first a common accessory, and then built-in. For a long time I did not get the point until I read an obituary of Lord Litchfield, the society photographer, which said it was his habit to hold the camera with one hand while gesticulating with the other to direct his sitters. In his time it seems to have been considered eccentric behaviour, but today I see Youtubers doing it all the time, and they complain that the 6x7 grip is on the "wrong side" - do they really want to hold that thing up with one hand!? Is this why reviewers attach so much importance to grip shape and lightness?
Another clue arises in the context of high voltages on older flash units. I have seen advice to use a radio trigger so the camera won't see the voltage. But, outside the studio, that implies holding the flash unit up with one hand and holding the camera in the other. Do photogs cover events like that? I don't know, I never get invited to any
. If so, things seems to have gone full circle : back in time, in the picture below, even before my father's time, photogs would hold up their flash units like animated Statues of Liberty, although at least their cameras were on a tripod.
I don't think PF does polls, so what is the consensus on this?