Does a zoom lense always need tripod ?

Here's another 600mm focal length picture that I took this past Monday at 1/60th of a second when I dropped the ISO level to 800 on a dark cloudy day. I was able to brace the camera and lens and the bird stayed still. I thought about using ISO400 afterwards, to see whether I could do it at about 1/30th of a second. It's a challenge sometimes to get the most out of our gear without a tripod. This is an extreme example but I thought I would show you or anyone else that's interested. When I was using my older Olympus DSLR system I was mostly limited to ISO800 (for usable pictures) so I had to try techniques to be successful on days with little light. The more modern DSLR cameras that allow us to use ISO1600 and higher make this a whole lot easier to keep the shutter speed higher and still retain enough depth of field with the chosen aperture.

Even though all of my wildlife photos are now taken with the Tamron 150-600mm lens, I found that the Canon 55-250mm IS lens to be adequate if the photographer had patience. It was a matter of letting the birds have trust in you and then they would come closer or allow you to be closer if you walked extremely slow step by step. I took pictures that way for about three years. The smaller Canon 55-250mm IS lens that I used in the sample below was also easier to take pictures in the rain under an umbrella (without a tripod).