Lenses for Tall Building photos

[ogino_koichiro]

Hi. I have a Sinar 4x5 camera and I wish to do architectural

photography. I'm specially interested on doing tall buildings from 20

stories and up. My main interest is to get perspective correction and

I'd like to know if anybody may suggest a lens or lens set. I will be

shooting on 4x5 film and 6x9 roll film. 90mm is enough? Will I need

the use of bag bellows? Any feedback will be higly appreciated.

Thanks!!!!

[jackflesher]

>> 90mm is enough? <<

 

Depends on how far away from the building you can get ;)

[ogino_koichiro]

well let's think about a place like New York, narrow streets, tall buildings, like empire state, how would a 75mm lens stand?

[howard_anderson1]

while working in a commercial studio in Chicago, I was assigned several building to photograph (John Hancock bldg, etc.). Depending on the views the clients wanted, I would set the camera up as high as possible. I would go high in adjoining buildings (with the owners permission), I rented a cherry picker for some. I would rarely set the camera up at ground level. I used a 150MM lens on a monorail camera. In Chicago anyway, I had plenty of room to use all the swings and tilts I needed with the 150. These pictures were used for advertising purposes and the clients wanted "normal" views for their purposes. There was a book published a couple of years back by a photographer (I can't remember her name) using a 65mm and 90mm from street level in Chicago. She used all her swings and tilts for perspective control. But, she did the book to accent the effects of the drawn out look these wide lens give. She worked early on weekend mornings to avoid traffic. Your lens length will depend on what you want in you photos.

[ronald_moravec1]

You will probably need a bag bellows. 90mm for 4x5 and 65 or 58 for roll film.

 

Again it depends how much room there is and the coverage of the lens. A 90 is about the same as a 24 on 35mm but the neg proportions are different.

 

Don`t forget the lenses do not have movement beyond the image circle.

Schneider site will give image circle and tell you how much the lens can be moved vertically and horizontally.

 

Be careful doing this as 9/11 has made security people paranoid. You are a terrorist unless you can prove othewise, like a letter from Bush himself. This is no joke either. If you have followed these forums lately, you would believe me. Use 35mm and move on quickly.

[michael_briggs2]

For 4x5, 90 mm will be sufficient for many but not all buildings. My current wide-angles are 72 mm and 110 mm. Even for architecture in the city I use the 110 more the the 72 mm. But there are plenty of cases where the 110 doesn't result in a pleasing framing from any of the available locations that give a pleasing view of the building. Sometimes a pleasing view of a building is from across a river and a normal lens will work nicely; sometimes the only available view is across the street and an extreme wide-angle is needed. So far the 72 mm has always done the job for me. Likely there are skyscrapers in NYC that can't be photographed from nearby even with a 72 mm lens for 4x5. For amateurs, there are just some buildings that can't be photographed well -- without going to the effort or expense of using a cherry picker or getting permission to photograph from another building, there is sometimes just too much stuff on the street level that obscures the building.

 

For 6x9 you will need even shorter lenses. Are you thinking of 6x9 for cost or convenience reasons? You can do a lot of 4x5 exposures for the price of a shorter lens needed to get a wide view onto the smaller 6x9 format.

 

I don't use a Sinar, but very likely you will need a bag bellows to use a 90 mm or shorter lens to its fullest potential. Try positioning the stanards of your camera so that the lensboard is 90 mm from the ground glass. Does the bellows permit movements such as front rise, or is it so compacted that it is rigid?

 

Don't forget that longer lenses, even ones long compared to the format diagonal, can be useful for detail shots or photos from a larger distance that show the building in context.

[donald_hutton]

I shoot inner city architecture quite a bit. In my experience, the most useful lenses are the 72mm XL Schneider and the 90mm XL Schneider. The 72 is essential sometimes - typically, you will be very constrained by your environment and this lens, being very wide, will create some 'working' room in tight situations. It also has more coverage than any other lens of this focal lengh. I use the 90mm a lot too - less severe than the 72, but an enormous amount of coverage - more than any other 90mm. Some will argue that you will never need an image circle bigger than the 235mm a typical fast 90mm lens offers - you will when shooting tall buildings in confined areas. These are both very expensive lenses - I would suggest getting the 90mm first and see how you go. Budget an extra $400 for the center filter (they are spec'ed for differing center filters - I actually use a Heliopan center filter and I am very satisfied with the results on both lenses). You will need to check how much movement you camera provides and expect to use indirect front rise a lot (tilt the rail and then level the standards to the perpendicular). You will definitely need bag bellows. The huge disadvantage of shooting roll film is that you will lose the benefits of the very wide angle lenses available (a 72mm is really not that wide on 6X9).

[Troll]

You don't need an especially wide lens. Just make lots of pictures and stitch them together in Photoshop, and correct the perspective distortion too.

[donald_hutton]

You've tried this Bill? Do you correct the distortion before stitching?? Or after? Perhaps you could post a nice example so we could all look and learn.

[ogino_koichiro]

Thanks a lot everybody! I'll begin my search for lenses and go shooting!

[jim_simmons]

I second Donald's advice. I use the 90mm SA XL, and I've gone far beyond the image circle that lesser 90s offer. And of course you'll need the bag bellows. Like others have mentioned, the image circle of the 72 far exceeds what is offered by any of the 75s out there. So you might need that. But start with the 90, as 90-110 is what 60-90% of most architectural work is done with, depending on the photographer.