I think the responses made are all very true, interesting and triggers a lot of thoughts atleast in my mind.
As for the quality of the pictures, I think I will not like to go below 1/25th of a second in the future and I will load EI400 to allow a small aperture for 'true' handheld. Joe certainly added very good advice from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE which allows slower films and slower speeds using a monopod or simply placing the camera on something steady. The quality is important as I too aim to enlarge the picture to 8x10" - 20x25".
I would like to distinguish between handheld and streetshooting. As Terence and 'CXC' both pointed out streetshooting is a game in itself. The camera obviously brings alot of attention and it's easy to get people to participate in a shot and ofcourse they also ask if they can have a copy...and I answer 'Yes, if the picture turns out well' ...and this is the difficult part...one really wants to live up to expectations (is this going to start another discussion about streetphoto??). (And what's the most common question - Is that a Hasselblad?) I did not go out to do streetshooting but I was overwhelmed with the possibilities as stated above.
With handheld it's like with many things - you simply don't know it before you have tried and you can not possibly imagine all things that might happen. ..but with trying comes experience. I did handheld for the second time yesterday and I did not make the same mistakes again because the procedure was now worked out. I will probably use my ShenHao 6x12 back with TMAX400 if setting up speed is important but then I need to depend fully on rangefinder focusing (as I do not want to switch between groundglass & rollfilmholder all the time).
So why did I try handheld in the first place?
I really enjoy (=love) LF because of the quality it brings in all aspects, the intellectual challenge, the manual work, the equipment, the reason to spend alot of money ;-). And I too use a steady tripod, focusing darkcloth, spotmeter etc and I spend minutes to adjust plane of focus, restoring perspectives, choosing filters etc with good result though I'm still learning.
Handheld to me is the opportunity to bring the camera in situations where the normal equipment might be too large and heavy to carry with me...or as a means to capture the changing light when the tripod would be too slow as 'CXC' pointed out. I happen to have a Linhof Technika which is capable of handheld - so why not learn how to? And it's great fun!
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