I recently attended a local classic-car 'Cruise Night' at a shopping centre parking lot, and brought my K-3 Mark III with a DA 20-40mm Limited lens.
I wanted some of the shots to be at 'low-angle' taken from near the ground. Two methods proved to be feasible and gave me the perspectives I was after.
1.
Live View on the fixed monitor screen. Crouch down. Use the neck strap to help stabilize the camera in an extended position at arms' length. Increase the brightness of the monitor screen. Tap the screen to focus, take the shot. A couple of the shots were not precisely level, which were fixed with slight horizon adjustments in post processing.
2.
Image Sync. Enable WiFi on the camera; my iPhone links automatically when it's not already connected to a wireless network (i.e., away from my home WiFi signal). Bring up Image Sync on the phone and enable the Shooting mode. Kneel down on the right knee, keep the left thigh level. Place and balance the phone on the left leg to view the image. Adjust the orientation of the camera, focus, and take the shot. The sample image here was taken with Image Sync.
Both methods worked well, including balancing the phone on my thigh temporarily. The parking lot was dry, so kneeling wasn't an issue. Alternatively, I could have placed the phone on the pavement.
Notes:
- All shots were hand-held. In other settings, I think that a tripod would have made the process with Image Sync even simpler.
- The camera and lens combo was relatively lightweight and easy to handle. A heavier lens, e.g., large telephoto or zoom, might be awkward. I would imagine that such a combo with an extended centre of gravity would also be tricky to handle even with a flip-screen in low-angle shots.
- One drawback of Image Sync is that it doesn't allow the live view image to be zoomed, e.g. for accurate focusing. I wasn't using manual focus, so this wasn't a disadvantage in this setting.
- I didn't find it difficult to orient the camera while looking at the iPhone screen 'off axis'.
- I had looked into getting a small hot-shoe phone holder, but I think I'll continue to use Image Sync on the phone as described here. 'High angle' shots probably would require a different approach.
- Craig
Shot taken using Image Sync on my iPhone: