Good evening,
As an octogenarian I have some minor problems with my bones, in particular arthritis in both knees! As one who likes to photograph wild flowers when they appear in spring I am finding it increasingly difficult to bend my knees to get down to flower level, I am therefore looking for suggestions as to how I can do so. Or if any of you suffer from the same complaint how to do you cope. I have a Pentax K3 which I'm sure you know hasn't got a tilting screen and I definitely cannot afford another camera which would have one. So ladies and gentlemen, suggestions please.
Thanks for reading and thanks in advance,
Howard
As
@Box Brownie suggested, I used to use an external monitor (5" Viltrox) designed for video, but worked fine for stills, with my Nikon D600 fixed screen camera.
My model is very old, but it's probably the equivalent of this
Product specifications: 1. 1200 Nits High Brightness High Definition 2. Full HD Resolution, Reveals True Beauty 3. 178° Ultra-wide Viewing Angle 4. Professional Monitoring Software 5. Custom 3D LUTS 6. Image Zoom Function 7. Settings and Touch Screen
viltrox.com
This was just like looking into the Nikon Viewfinder but much bigger. And you can magnify the view to allow for critical focus.
It doesn't need to fitted into the camera flash shoe, as a suitable length of cable will allow it to be fitted onto a bracket that allows more convenient working. For example you could (though I never did) mount it 250mm above the camera, giving more flexibility on how low you need to bend down
While this worked, because I used manual focus lenses I still needed to get down to focus, and the whole rig was that much more unwieldy than just the camera when positioning the tripod as the balance with the montor made it more "top heavy" than usual.
Hand holding the camera, and using autofocus would probably have been fine. But you still need to carry extra batteries for the monitor.
Although this doesn't always work, using a telephoto lens from further away gives a less "top down" view of plants and flowers without you needing to bend down. But this means there are likely to be more things between you and the flower you want to photograph. I use a 300mm f4 a fair amount for flower close ups, and this means a lot less bending down.
As an aside, my eventual solution was to save up for a Nikon Z8, which has a four way tilting screen. The Z8 was needed as other Nikons at the time only had a horizontal tilting screen, which doesn't help with my "normally" vertical photographs of flowers.
But while this helps I still need to get down pretty low , because I am still manually focusing my lenses.
If I was using Autofocus, and just using the tilting screen for framing this would be an ideal set up. As it is, I still think about reverting back to the external monitor, but not sure if I want to go back to the hassle.
