Originally posted by MilamBardo I'm glad to hear that it is possible. What effect does having no image stabilization have? Do you miss a lot of shots? Loss of sharpness? (Nice images by the way. Your shot of the sleeping boy is great)
EDIT: Ah okay, I've just reread - you are purely a film shooter, so no image stabilization in those cameras anyway.
With 645, I only shoot film, but I do shoot digital with and without stabilization. I rarely miss a shot because I avoid shooting with slow shutter speeds unless I'm using a tripod.
The key handheld without stabilization is to avoid shooting below the focal length as a fraction of a second; i.e. 75mm lens while shooting a static subject at 1/75" or faster; 35mm at 1/35" or faster; 200mm at 1/200" or faster. The 645 has significant mirror slap induced blur, so I really try to maintain more like 1/250" as a minimum shutter speed handheld. If I'm not pixel or grain peeping, I can get away with slower shutter speeds, but the slower it is the more problematic with blur.
Most of the shots you're seeing in my gallery were shot handheld with 100 ISO for the color and 400 ISO for the B&W. Holding the camera correctly (left palm under the lens), bracing my left arm to my torso, exhaling on the shot, using continuous drive for multiple shots, and using standard to wide primes all contribute to maintaining sharpness and avoiding blur.
And regardless of film or digital, I don't care about my hit vs. miss ratio; I'm not worried about the duds as long as I get the one keeper.