The freedom of movement when using a hand held camera mounting can mean easy accessibility to small spaces or the faces to which people can see. This means that we can identify to characters with ease and that we can see views that you may not see by using other mountings.
The use of a hand held camera can make a 'Hollywood' film suddenly seem real because of the natural unsteadiness of someones hand. This automatically creates the 'documentary' feeling which people have associated with reality.
Hand held camera mounting: The history:
The hand held camera mounting was the first to be used and was mainly used for journalism and documentaries, this is still the case but now major directors have chosen the hand held camera mounting over other more modern choices. Among these people are; Olivier Assayas, Maya Deren and during the early part of his career Jean-Luc Godard.
During the 'silent era' this technique was first used but with some difficulty. Although the cameras were light weight they were often to bulky and operators had great difficulty in moving the cameras for extend periods of time.
By the 1920's cameras were being designed with hand held ergonomics. Although this was mainly to grow their business through the growing documentary craze.
Then came the emergence of sound film. This caused trouble due to the equipment being unable to handle sound which was quite often to loud for the camera. People were then forced to put their cameras into sound proof booths.
By 1929 there had been an advancement manufacturers had created shells to deafen the sound of mechanical equipment. This came at a cost though cameras became considerably heavier.
By 1934 the overall weight of the camera and equipment came to 135lb this precluded hand held usage.
By the 1960's people realised the effects of these small cameras. They were mainly consequences due to the fact that after filming it took considerably longer to edit. This was because sound was limited and image was impaired.
By 1961 came light Michel Brault and Raoul Coutard designed and manufactured self blimped hand held camera this was called the Eclair-Coutant. They later designed the Eclair NPR which was the first light weight sync-sound movie camera.
Above information- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand-held_camera
Modern hand held camera photograph and films:
Below photograph: http://www.aerialimage.com/store/media/ccp0/cat/mgmdv_boat_003.jpg
Above films :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqGehBy3NV4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EarBgUoOXHc
