Poll: Do you...?

Poll: Do you...?

  • Total voters
    187
mw_uio said:
Barrett, you are bringing it on! Nice one! More please! 🙂 Is this from brooklyn?

Cheers

Mark
Quito, EC
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Yes, Planet Brooklyn (well, close enough; Q train, across Manhattan Bridge), 2002. Thanks. 🙂


- Barrett
 
When I shoot pictures of bands playing a local club, I like to hold the flash in my left hand & camera in my right hand & shoot aiming upward from about waist level. Sometimes I'll hold the camera overhead too. This especially works well with my digicam & the add-on wide-angle, but I've used my GSN w/ auxiliary wide to some decent effect too.

There's plenty of bad shots w/ this method, but I really enjoy the winners I get anyway.
 

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RayPA said:
I do occassionally use the hipshot, but rarely from waist-level or below chest level. I call any shot that wasn't framed through the veiwfinder a hipshot. Most of my hipshots are just held near my face (off to one side, or just below my chin), or at my chest or arms-length away from my body. I rarely shoot below my belly-button. I don't like the angle. It LOOKS like a "hip"shot.

:
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You mean like this one, Ray? 😀
That's an honest to goodness hipshot!
 

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I tried it a couple of times as an experiment but otherwise never, unless I'm using a TLR or another camera designed for other-than-eye-level shooting.
 
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No...because I don't do any kind of 'street shooting' other than that associated with my day job...and when I do that then it's pretty obvious what's going on...and shooting from the waist offers no advantage and lots of disadvantages...
 
>Do You Shoot from the waist???

I routinely shot from my waist level when I used a twin-lens reflex with a waist level view finder.

I normally shoot at the subject’s waist level when shooting full length portraits.

I occasionally shoot from my waist level when shooting clandestine candids.

I rarely shoot from my waist level when using my rangefinder or my SLR.

I occasionally shoot from my waist level when using my digital camera with the adjustable LCD view screen.

I never shoot from waist level when I am up to my neck in swamp water.
 
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Sometimes I shoot frome the waist. If you allow yourself to feel the rhythm as you're walking down the street, I often find some unexpected surprises after developing the film. The hardest part is framing the image for interesting juxtapositions of your main subject and the background the relevant background noise. I would also include exposure and judging distance.
 
On occasion I do when I'm shooting digital and I don't have to worry about wasting film. Once in a while, I get a gem that way. I just can't bring myself to be quite that free with film.
 
Ever see one of the original Exaktas? Those were waist level, or at least belly-button. When they came along with an eye-level finder, the two were interchangeable. And most users promptly fell in love with the eye-level.

With most of today's cameras, waist-level might work with a widish-angle lens, but other than that, it's pretty shot-in-the-dark. It strikes me as mostly a way of taking pictures without raising suspicions of those around, which may at times have its purposes. I've seen news photographers hold them above the head, but that's because they aren't 6'8" tall. And what they get may be pretty random.
 
With my Bessa L and the CV 25, it’s not hard at all. Even the T works well for it, as the meter LEDs are on the outside (no viewfinders on either). Shooting from the hip or way over head is when there is no alternative. From the hip when I should not be shooting or over head when I can not get any place higher to stand. I judge success mostly in both cases with a lot of cropping after the fact. Not my style, but it’s better than nothing.

Both Kodak and Leica made viewfinders that you can use without putting your face up close and shoot from the hip, but I have yet to find one at a reasonable price. There are several that you need to put your eye right up to, but I think this defeat the purpose.

B2 (;->
 
It's not my regular technique, but I have done it. Most of my Rockette shots could be classified as "hip-shots" as I was trying to be low key about it.
 
More than just from the waist, sometimes I shoot without looking into the finder for extra speed and/or extra reach:
- this one with the camera above my head
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1801048870&context=set-72157600129466148&size=l
- this one from the hip
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1544272671&context=set-72157600129466148&size=l
- and this one from ground level
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1651855411&context=set-72157602011004931&size=l

There are two problems involved: the precise framing obviously, and also sometimes the reaction of people, if yoy literally stick the camera in their face when using the wide angles.
 
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