View Camera Movement for Architecture

What is the technical term for the movement to correct architecture?

It has slipped my mind. It's named after some guys.

Thanks so much!

Do you mean Mr Rise, Mr. Fall, the rarely seen Mr. Tilt, or Mr. Swing?

Sometimes they work together, sometimes not.<P>Yu are probaly thinking of

the Scheimpflug Theorem, which rarely gets used in architectural

photography, but often is used when making landscape photographs.

Ellis: You mean Dr. Rise, Dr. Fall, Dr. Swing and Dr. Tilt. They all hold PhDs from MIT. Tito (Augusta, GA).

No Mrs. in the bandwagon ???

Ellis,

 

Is Mr. Tilt rarely seen? I use Mr. Tilt quite often. He's a pain in the ass, though. He is often counterintuitive. After using Mr. Rise, I think I should use Mr. Tilt to broaden the top of the building, but in fact it is the opposite --- a perfectly parallel building looks wrong, looks top-heavy in my final print, and Mr. Tilt should be used gently the other way to create a tiny bit of keystoning , which looks correct to the viewer's eye. Do you find that this is so?

 

Ms. Sandy

Scheimpflug rule - named after Theodor Scheimpflug

 

 

Per Volquartz

 

http://www.volquartz.com/pervolquartz

Anna,

 

Please excuse the silly season responses - they happen each year, which is always something to look forward too.

 

The distortion which manifests itself as converging verticals is called keystoning, and is corrected in the view camera using primarily a rise on the lens to capture the all of the building while the back remains vertical. It often looks a better if you don't remove all of the keystoning.

 

Mr Tilt was trying to get a rise out of you before taking a swing and setting you up for a fall. Naughty Mr Tilt!

 

#8^)

"The movement to correct architecture"? Post-modernism.

 

Happy Holidays,

Nicholas

Whatever you do, beware of over-correcting- I have seen some pictures of buildings (by well-known people) that appeared to flare out at the top.

 

I personally think you should tilt the camera back a few degrees and then raise the front. This may look more natural.

it's quite true, that if you correct keyholing on a taller building so it is "mathematically" correct and it all lines up with the grids on your GG, that visually it looks odd - mushrooming a touch at the top.

 

In practice, I often find it best not to correct the keyholing 100% - it's one of those eye mind tricks our brain plays on us.

""The movement to correct architecture"? Post-modernism."

 

what a great xmas laugh - even the architect in the house found it funny for once!

Interesting to see a number of responses that favor only partial

correction of convergence. The notion that buildings should be shown

with sides parallel--without converging--is just a convention

inherited from drawing/painting and standard single vanishing point

perspective rules. Of course when we look up at a building, the sides

*do* converge to our eyes. But there's a tradition that they shouldn't

converge in a picture. The choice of whether to show this convergence,

remove it, or compromise somewhere in between is a pictorial choice

for each picture, each photographer. Nice to see it presented as such

instead of a right/wrong, correct/incorrect doctrine.

 

That said, when doing large format work I almost always use a

perfectly vertical camera back, and accept the rendering which

includes the visually wonderful effect sometimes described as "ship's

prow" when strong rise is used with a short lens to photograph a

building seen at a diagonal in the horizontal plane rather th

Wieslaw asked:

 

>No Mrs. in the bandwagon ???

 

As a LF newbie, I've had plenty of contact with another member

of the family, Miss Take.

 

Happy holidays to all and thanks for sharing your extensive

knowledge. I am sure I'd be on even closer terms with Miss Take

if it wasn't for the help of all the generous contributions here.

Thanks Ellis, Nicholas, Sandy et al. This was the funniest thread I've seen in a long time.

Yes, I believe you are making reference to the Scheimpflug rule which involves a forward or rearward tilt, a left or right swing or sometimes a combination of movement in both a vertical and horizontal planes to alter the subject plane (the plane on which everything is simultaneously in focus). Typically this is not a movement you would use much in architectural work, but I have on a few occasions employed it. One such time involved photographing a fluted smoke stack made of brick. I wanted a point of view from very close to the base of the stack looking up. This, to accentuate the convergence that otherwise would not be as dramatic from further away. To get everything into sharp focus from the base to the top required a rearward tilt of the back. This created a subject plane that followed the surface of the tower.

 

As far as everyday kinds of photographs of buildings, front or rear rise is probably the most commonly needed movement. When you view a building from ground level and at a distance that provides a view of other objects, like cars, people, adjacent structures, you may wish to not make the sides of a tall structure perfectly parallel in order to prevent the top portion of the building from looking wider than the bottom. Our visual logic tells us that this condition can't exsist. If you are cropping surrounding subjects out of the frame completely, you can get away with perfect parallelism and might find it pleasing. It works under these circustances because we don't have as many visual cues to tell us it's "wrong".

 

Just another footnote: Scheimplug did not discover this theory or rule or whatever you wish to call it. A Frenchman named Charpentier was responsible for this. T.S. used this theory in map making from a hot air balloon, BTW. Scheimplug readily credited Charpentier for the discovery, but because T.S. was the first to apply it, it is Sheimpflug who got credited. Personally I think it's because his name is harder to spell and pronounce and technical sorts have an affinity for stuff like that.

So many varying opinions. I shoot a lot of Architecture and I

generally go with the belief it is best to have the verticals

completely corrested, or obviously not corrected. I personally

don't like the almost corrected look. I definitely have seen some

shots where houses seem to loom, though. Almost every one I

see for US Home looks that way. I've never checked to see if

they are actually over corrected. I usually avoid the looming look

by shooting from enough of a distance that it's not an issue.