Monopods help heaps and are usually pretty compact. If you can try one out in the shop, that'd be best.

Hmm, do monopods and tripods help... I consider a small tripod invaluable (Velbon 343E for instance). I haven't bothered with a monopod but I'd feel comfortable investing in one for hiking/climbing trips. I can hand-hold a shot for a rock-steady and tack sharp shot at 1/30s. I used to be able to do slower. But I still love using a tripod. Much less anxiety when you really want to get a shot down. Plus they're an absolute necessity if you an to take multiple shots from the same position/angle. Or make small variations based off previous shots.

When not armed with a tripod, the suggestions givin in the thread are classic. You can also rest your camera on a flat surface and use its timer, brace yourself against a fixed object such as a wall or tree, brace part of the camera body and/or lense against same (creatiing a a three-point contact with the object by using the camera body and end of lense (or lense hood)) - this works especially well with trees.

One of the best shots I've ever taken was in Venice with the camera sitting on a ledge on a bridge. I manually held the shutter open for 2 seconds (timed it by eye ) Tht was with a a film-based SLR (which I've used for most of my shooting). I'm using a Nikon 5700 right now until DSLRs climb to the levels of quality I'm looking for and drop to the prices I'm comfortable with. The consumer-DSLRs aren't there on technical merit yet.

Bruno