You need camera moves to make your video interesting. The quickest way to bore your audience is to zoom in really tight on a stationary object and not move the camera for five minutes. Camera moves are often easier with a tripod, but you can do just fine without one. You're a videotaping machine, remember?

If your stance is like the one described earlier, you are all ready to move with the action. It's just a matter of following it when it occurs. There are a few guidelines, though, that can help keep your footage free of jitters and make it a lot more interesting to watch.

First of all, use your zoom sparingly. Sure, you're stable; yes, you're a machine, but you're not made of stone. Your breathing alone is enough to shake the camcorder just a little. The tighter you zoom in on a moving object, the more obvious these little jitters will become. Take a lesson from marksmen: take steady, long, slow breaths instead of short ones to steady yourself even further. If you want to hold your breath and use meditation to reduce your blood flow, that's your business. I would suggest, however, that it may be easier just to stay zoomed out to a wide or medium-wide shot.

The most important part of shooting video is getting a good shot of everything. Watch your nightly news sometime. You're bound to catch a helicopter chase sooner or later. The camera operator will almost always stay zoomed out, wide enough to see the runaway bus and the twelve squad cars chasing it. He could zoom in if he wanted to, but since he's got a camera on his shoulder shooting from a hundred feet in the air in a helicopter traveling at a high rate of speed, he knows how jittery things could get. He's more concerned with getting a decent shot of everything than a shaky shot of just one thing.

If it is imperative that you get a close-up, you have an option. Zoom out as far as you can go and physically take the camera up close to the subject. By moving the camera and not using the zoom to get close, you can keep jitters to a mi…