Poll: Do you...?

Poll: Do you...?

  • Total voters
    187
sitemistic said:
Ah, the classic "hail mary" shot, holding the camera overhead to shoot over a crowd. PJ's do this a lot. You can actually get pretty good at it if you do it a lot.

I've never really been a fan of shooting from the hip, even though autofocus, autoexposure cameras make it pretty easy. If I can't frame it like I want, I'd rather not shoot it.
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Funny you should bring this up: I actually stopped doing a lot of hip/"Hail-Mary" shots when I was running around with AF SLRs, mostly because I was dealinng a lot woth zooms: perhaps the typical PJ is a better (wo)man than I am, but I wasn't having much fun hoisting a camera with a big, heavy (but fast) 28-70 zoom over my head like a drunken Jack Sparrow weilding a pistol. This is one thing, IMO, that RFs are better at. But even now, I rarely shoot that way unless I'm covering an event, where "doing a Mary" is SOP.


- Barrett
 
Yeah, I do it every now and then. It's surprising how good the photos can be. Sometimes it's just surprising....
 
I am just getting familiar with zone focusing techniques, but I shoot from the hip all the time anyway. It makes me feel all loosey goosey. And like others have said, sometimes you get a shot that would have never been composed, or is just so out of focus that it works.
 
I like to shoot close-up with my c220, given the offset lens and the distance to subject framing is already a gamble.

Any hipshots from the 35 are an attempt to catch my two older kids off-guard ... otherwise I only capture their smirks or distorted hands blocking the frame.
 
I saw this young guy with a Rebel XTI hanging around his neck right where his navel would be and he had approached some girls standing and he would push his stomach forward to raise the lens and he shot in burst mode. The whole thing just looked hilarious. All he had to do was rais the camera to his eye level and no one would care but i guess he was shy.
 
These girls wouldn't happen to be wearing loose fitting belly shirts or bikini tops would they? He may not be as shy as you think.
 
I shoot from the hip from time to time and often get interesting shots because of the perspective, rarely as others have said over the head, I'm wearing out the right knee of my jeans from dropping down for a shot, I like setting the camera on the ground with an ultra wide lens, got a shot I really like with the camera on my lap while sitting on a bench with just zone focus, shoot with my TLR, shoot close up on the street with a 15mm from chest height, and when not doing any of the above with the VF up to my eye.

I'm open to all approaches being curious to what surprise I might get, I've never done well with what I should do and the don't do things.
 
NEVER. Winnogrand said it best (and I apologize if i f up the quote) the second you take that camera away from your eye you give up any and all control. Even if the camera is only at your eye for the instant the picture is snapped, you are exerting some amount of control on the way that image looks.
 
Rarely. Here we had just been ordered off of the street by the cop in the car - it was pretty crowded on the curb, would have been toughish to get my face that low.
 

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