The last day of the Folk festival I went entirely with film to save my back and to try something different. I felt I got all my band shots out of my head on the first day and wanted to soak in the atmosphere a bit more and let things happen. Also, I bought my music-loving parents tickets and wanted to hang out a bit.

Working with 645 medium format

For some the 6x4.5 medium format is a perfect compromise between portability and the quality of a medium format image. While you can argue about resolution in today's world where you can easily buy an 18mpx DSLR, a medium format image has dreamy depth of field. Everything else goes down to form factor and a slowed down pace of working - after all, you only have 16 shots to work with.

I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to get band shots like I did the first day with my Mamiya (though it is possible with proper prism and handgrip).

Let's make things more difficult - let's use a waist-level finder

Also to mix things up even more I decided to force myself to use the waist-level finder. A waist-level finder (picture in the link) is a top-down viewfinder. It is lighter than the other prisms, cutting down on weight, and puts the camera down .. guess where? At the waist.

On the one hand, using the waist-level finder (WLF) is an oddity. The image is reversed (left to right) and framing can be difficult twist and yaw to get compose. This is hard to explain but when you are looking down on the viewfinder and looking at a reversed image trying to do simple things like leveling can be difficult until - snap - you just do it. I found also it helps to bring the camera up to chest level so that your movements are not magnified by distance from your eyes. Again, hard to explain if you haven't done it. Those who are more practiced at shooting with a WLF probably don't even think about it.

In practice, I set up my frame and then allowed people to walk into it. So instead of being a stalking hunter, I became the ambush hunter.

On the other hand, shooting when your camera is way down means that people around you don't really register that you are shooting at all. If you see the shot below you will only see one person in the crowd who knows what I'm doing.

When your machine is down there instead of held in front of you with the lens pointing at their heads, it doesn't quite break the frame of the subject's vision which is at head level. Those who do see your camera and don't know about WLF's, may think you are trying to adjust your camera or view pictures on it. Either way it gives you an advantage of their not noticing for candid shots.

Unfortunately, it also means people walk in front of you a lot :) I won't post any photos of big blurry people wrecking any of my shots but there were more than a couple out of the three rolls I had shot.

I did shoot a roll of expired 400VC trying to do some band shots but really there is no comparison to the ease of use of my 7D and long lens in getting band shots. Without a proper prism viewfinder, it was really difficult framing. In retrospect, I should have packed mine and swapped it out when I wanted to do some band shooting.

Still, it beats shooting the festival with a 4x5 large format like I did last summer.

It was also nice watching many other photographers at work. Many of them leaning on the stage with short primes. One or two others with huge telephoto primes. I chatted for a bit with some of the festival volunteer photographers and shared some notes. Love love this time.

And then I put my cameras away

By four o'clock I decided I had shot more than enough the entire festival and went home to develop these pictures. I had another mishap when I realized that I had not shot any of the 35mm that I had brought along (I must not have fed it in right) but otherwise was satisfied with both days.

After developing and hanging these to dry, I returned for the evening just to dance. And now I'm recovering... Until next year.