I admit that my love of photography has made me a little crazy. I bring my tripod with me when I travel. Not just one of those little "table top" tripods, either, but my regular tripod that gets to five and a half feet tall fully extended. Once I get to where I am going, I typically leave the tripod in the hotel unless I know I will need it, but I need it more often than not, especially after the sun goes down.

Canon, Nikon, and the other major equipment manufacturers all make image stabilized lenses, which compensate for camera shake when you shoot at relatively slow shutter speeds. Still, there is no substitute for a tripod.

A stabilized lens will not allow you to shoot a pictures like this one, this one, or even this one. All of those photos needed exposures from several seconds to several minutes long.