I want to continue the discussion about reducing camera vibration when taking landscape photos. When Eric and I traveled to Glacier National Park a few years ago, I took several shots of a distant waterfall using a 300mm lens on a tripod. When I returned home and viewed the images, they were all blurry. I didn't understand what went wrong. Later I read an article in Popular Photography magazine that showed image blurring verses shutter speed. It turns out that when the mirror in a digital SLR flips up, it vibrates the camera and can result in a blurry photo if the shutter speed is between 1/2 and 1/30 of a second. That was the shutter speed range I had used. In addition, the problem was magnified with the 300mm telephoto lens.
Now I use the cameras mirror lockup feature along with a two second delay. This allows the mirror to flip up and the vibrations dampen before the photo is captured two seconds later. This technique has totally eliminated the problem and our shots are sharp at any shutter speed.
