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How to optimise your mirrorless camera tilt screen for waist level shooting with a piece of wood

Jan 1, 2022 by Paul Richters 17 Comments

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If you just want to shoot from the waist then this is a tutorial for you.

The idea spans around taking a Canon EOS M200 (or a similar camera with a tilting screen) and adding a wedge-shaped piece of wood (40x55x800mm). Together they change this camera into a Hasselblad 907x lookalike. It’s something of a follow-up to my 2015 article on how to do this with a Canon Powershot N.

The making of the kite-shaped piece of wood is described in the schema below:

At my local woodshop. I ordered 4 wedge-shaped pieces of wood (40 x 55 x 800mm) (around €10,-).

Remove the excess wood to change the wedge shape into a kite shape. The two angles between the sides AB should be 90 °. Achieving this should be easy. Your local woodshop could do this as well. Also, saw a small part from a big wooden stir stick (28 x 40 x 4mm).

The images and photos below show the concept of the build:

Tips on building the wooden body part

The camera body on the inside isn’t completely rectangular. A small strip of wood has to be removed to let it fit under the pop-up flash.

To actually enjoy holding the new wooden body part of the camera you’ll have to round the edges. For this I used sandpaper.

You might want to stop the camera screw from coming loose from the ground plate. For this, I used a small piece of an old inner tube from a racing bicycle. These are thinner than inner tubes for a normal bicycle.

The use of the AE-Lock button is somewhat hindered by the wooden grip. Removing some wood the size of your thumb would remove this discomfort.

You can personalize it by painting it in your own favorite color.

The wooden stir stick (normally used to stir wall paint) I got for free at my local DIY store.




 

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Filed Under: DIY Tagged With: Canon M200, DIY, Paul Richters, waist level shooting

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Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

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John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

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