Or should that be “waist-shooting”?

I was walking around town a while back and, largely out of nowhere, wondered how effective if might be to try using my Yashica Mat 124G with zone-focus. It was a bright day, and I was shooting 400asa film, so I could set the camera to a relatively narrow aperture of f/8 (although, on a 6×6 medium format camera, the depth of field at f/8 at short distances is still pretty shallow).

The Yashica has a handy scale guide on the focus knob, so I set it to around 8 feet and shot a few pictures of passersby, using the focus screen to compose, but not the magnifier. And it worked quite well. If I pixel peep the full size pictures then they’re not perfectly in focus on the main subjects, but they’re certainly within an acceptable level of sharpness.

It’s probably not going to be a technique I use often, but it might be worthwhile at events such as carnivals or similar where there are lots of interesting subjects, but not enough time to finesse the focus for each shot.

Yashica Mat 124G and Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 10.5mins @ 20°.

Taken on 25 October 2025