Sack O' Beans

There are a lot of reasons I gravitate to medium format SLRs and one of the major joys of using them, to me at least, is how naturally they work with waist level finders. I'm not the only fan of the WLF out there of course, but not everyone loves them for the same reason. Some street photographers appreciate them for the unusual chest to waist level perspective, the not so off-putting way it has you looking down rather than directly at your subject, and for some I'm sure just the fact that it's the way Vivian Maier worked is reason enough. As someone who focuses primarily on landscape subjects however merely getting down to waist level is often not good enough. The ideal perspective for me usually has little to do with the standard eye-level view of the world we see day to day, and more often than not I find that means getting low. How low depends on the subject but waist level, knee level, even ground level, I find occasions for them all. The WLF saves me from having to get down in the muck for low level shots as would be needed if I were using a camera with an eye level finder. But just because I can frame and focus down at ground level is only half the battle. Since I rarely shoot hand held supporting the camera down there presents challenges of its own.

My trusty Manfrotto 055 at its lowest.

My trusty Manfrotto 055 tripod with its splayable legs and sawed off centre column is set up as well as it can be for the low perspective. It's just fine for most of what I do, but even at its lowest it only goes down to about knee level. If I chose a different tripod head it could probably go a bit lower still, but not much I don't imagine. I even own an old Manfrotto Super 3D head that would in theory allow me to invert the centre column so it's hanging underneath the tripod then flip the head around to keep the camera upright and go down nearly to ground level. If this sounds a bit awkward I have to say that until you've tried actually shooting this way you don't know the half of it. Even in the normal upright position I've always found this head less than ideal and at any rate it's not really made to handle larger cameras.

I've tried other solutions for getting lower. I have a clamp that attaches to the tripod leg and supports the camera from there but when you add the necessary tripod head to it it's as bulky to carry as the tripod itself and not much more fun to use than trying to invert the centre column. There's other solutions I'm sure, and probably much more workable ones such as more flexible tripod designs, ground boards, and the like but it's going to be hard to justify the price of any of those even if they can match the simplicity, reliability, and portability of something I found lying around the hall linen closet unused and forgotten about for probably over a decade.

My Sack O' Beans (pictured at the top hiding under the RBeast) was never intended by its manufacturers to be a photographic accessory. If memory serves it was made to be thrown into a microwave until suitably toasty then placed against a sore back or some such. The practice never caught on around here and it eventually wound up on a box of things to donate until the notion occurred that there might have a place in my camera bag. I'm sure there are other kinds of equally suitable bean bags sold for other purposes. There are even bean bags made for photographers but for my purposes I'm not sure what if any advantage they would have over my closet find. It's about the right size for the cameras I like to use, neither too light nor too heavy, enough give to accommodate itself to the shape of the camera and whatever surface it's on but firm enough to hold steady once it has. I don't believe it's water tight but it's tough enough to throw in the wash if exposed to any soggy nastiness. For something that would otherwise just have been thrown or given away I could hardly do better.

The Sack O' Beans in use. Results below.

 Now using bean bags as support for a camera is hardly a new idea but most of the ones I see on the market are targeted at wildlife photographers. These usually have a sort of folded over design intended to be thrown over the edge of a window or car door, which is great I suppose if that's how you're likely to be shooting. I don't know that these would be particularly good in situations that didn't involve a window, especially not when the idea is to get right down to ground level. For more general use I don't know if there's a better design than a simple pillow type bean bag. Mine was purchased at a pharmacy originally and I haven't modified it in any way. I don't know what other purposes suitably sized bean bags are sold for these days but I'm sure there are many I'm just not thinking of right now. If you're handy sewing, or know someone who is and would be willing to help, it would be a cinch to make one. I tried this myself years ago by re-stuffing an old decorative pillow with navy beans. Not a bad idea but navy beans are too large in my experience. I'd go with something more pea-sized if I were to try that again. Also decorative pillows aren't very tough when it comes to field use. Just sayin'.

While using a bean bag for support might seem like a step down from the stability of a tripod I have successfully used mine for long exposure photography without issue. Using mine with either the Hasselblad 503cx or RB67, so long as I can get the mirror pre-released without nudging anything and use a cable release for the shutter, there's little chance anything is going to move during a longer exposure. Just pressing the shutter release by hand is a little tricky with most medium format cameras designed around a waist level finder, both of mine included, because the shutter release is at the bottom where it tends to sink into the bean bag if it's not carefully positioned. I tend not to shoot this way and can't really attest to what kind of shutter speeds you might be able to get away with shooting this way.

The image above was shot at 1/2 second using mirror lock and a cable release. (All the "something seems to be afoot here" jokes have been made in advance so let's just move on then shall we.) I imagine I could have made something of the subject if I had to shoot from the tripod but I'd be pretty much shooting down at it, losing the sky, and it just wouldn't be the same. I may not use it every outing but the Sack O' Beans tucks away into a little bottom compartment in my large camera pack where I can pretty much forget about it until needed.

The Sack O' Beans is the most obvious example of a photographic accessory that was never intended to be photographic accessory but there are others, especially in the darkroom. They often offer neat solutions without the price tag associated with specialty photographic items. I'm sure there are plenty of useful examples, maybe some worth devoting a future episode to?