Movement question

[mjferron]

<p>Took me 3 tries to (kind of) land this photo. I found to keep things in perspective I needed to raise the tripod and center post high enough for me to stand on the park bench to finalize the shot. ( I'm vertically challenged). I also needed to raise the lens almost to near the point of loosing coverage to get the top point in the photo. I had the camera level for this shot. My question is if I tilt the camera up to frame and then get all the distorted wonk I'd get with a 35mm is there a way to correct it? I'm a new LF rookie and am trying to keep the camera level. Any advice on the situation would be welcome. Excuse the car in the photo. Don't know how I didn't see that coming. LOL. I've taken about ten shots with this cmaera and have yet to produce a real decent negative. I'm missing the Mamiya 7 I sold to buy this rig so someone encourage me please. :0 Taken with a Shen Hao and Rodenstock 150. HP5+ shot at 200 with a yellow filter and developed in Tmax. 1/15 and F22.</p><div></div>

[david_l3]

<p>If you need to tilt the camera, forward tilt both front and rear standards with the bed angled up. Make sure both standards are vertical, and parallel, though offset. Beware of limits in your lens coverage, vignetting can result in this case with a large amount of lens shift. If you happen to have inadequate lens coverage, an option is to back up a little until the elements you want in the frame are included, then crop slightly in printing. Nice photo, well done, and I don't mind the blurred car myself. </p>

[tim_ludwig2]

<p>Hi, Michael.</p>

<p>First of all, please keep in mind that large format, like all of photography, is a never ending learning curve. So, try not to get too impatient to get to where you were with the Mamiya 7. You are dealing with a totally different animal now and it is equally delightful in it's own way.</p>

<p>The short answer is yes to correcting the keystoning, but only limited amounts and it has to happen by tilting the enlarging easel opposite the direction of the image tilt, figuring out a mid- point focus plane and then stopping the enlarging lens down far enough to keep both the high and low points of the image on the easel in focus. In general, enlarging lenses work best stopped down about 3-4 stops, and you will need more like f 16 or f 22 for this trick. Likely the image will go a bit soft due to refraction from the iris blades.</p>

<p>You could also scan the neg and do some corrections in an image processing program, but it's better and easier to do it in camera.</p>

<p>It is clear that you already have both a good eye and a solid grounding in technique with the new camera. Your choices in movements are well thought out and in my mind, appropriate.</p>

<p>Only two things come to mind to contribute. One is that when you can beg, borrow or buy one, a wider angle lens will offer you new opportunities in your architectural work. Even a 90mm will give you a nice extension of foreground to background perspective which will cause buildings to have a more dramatic "feel". It will also give you a much wider field of view....including vertically. Buying a good used on with a wide image circle to accomodate fairly big movements whould not break the budget too badly when you decide to make that move.</p>

<p>The other is to add a Polarizing filter to your kit for virtually every image with a sky and to experiment with that in combination with the yellow and a deep red filter. The combination of deep red and Polarizer will give near black skies and isolate white clouds like nothing else. It also makes your subject stand out from the skies with much more drama.</p>

<p>Remember to add the filter factors of both types of filters and add the appropriate amount of time (presuming you want to preserve the fstop for depth of field) to your metered exposure. Also remember that with black and white film, any colored filter will lighten its own color and darken the color opposite its own on the color wheel. Meaning that red will lighten red brick, red lettering on signs, etc. and dramatically darken blue skies, green foliage, etc. The Polarizer removes glare from objects and the vapor haze in the skies which further darkens and improves contrast.</p>

<p>Welcome to the large format adventure. I suspect you will get thoroughly hooked.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

<p>Tim</p>

[mjferron]

<p>Dave and Tim thanks for the replies, advice and encourgement. I just spent some time on the scanned negative and printed it out at 12x16. I don't think my Mamiya 7 could do as well. I'm throughly impressed with the detail and tones. With 8x10 prints other cameras can look as good but when you bump it up some you see the advantages of the big negative.</p>

[michael_briggs2]

<p>If you do end up with a small amount of keystoning there are several ways to correct. As Tim said, if you are using an enlarger, you can tilt the easel and stop the enlarger lens down to bring all of the image into focus. Some enlargers have the option of tilting the head to use the Scheimpflug rule to bring the image into focus. If you are printing digitally, Photoshop and other image processing programs have methods of changing the perspective. Assuming that you want the final image to be a rectangle rather than a trapezoid, all of these methods will cause a crop of the image, so if you know that you will be using one, allow some margin on the image for the loss. As already said, it is better to get it right on the film to begin with.</p>

<p>Considering the problem a little more broadly, having a wider lens will make this easier (as already suggested). Also stepping farther away. Sometimes just several feet will help. If necessary, consider a different view -- more oblique, up or down the street will give you a greater distance.</p>

<p>As you already used, raising the camera helps. Some architecture pro photographers convince building owners to let them photograph from other buildings, or even hire cherry pickers.</p>

<p>A lot of Atget's photos show vignetting at the upper corners. Times have changed on what is expected....</p>

<p>P.S. Excellent photo for your tenth LF effort.</p>

[spodzone]

I, for one, would seek to cure the rotation at source first, then you can consider the required tilt. Yes you'll end up clambering over park-benches and balancing on one leg on boulders etc, but if you arrange it so the *blindingly obvious* right-angle in this shot coincides with a set of grid-lines on the ground-glass, *and* the spirit-level shows dead-centre on the top (hence the acrobatics), and you have a fair bit of front-rise, then you should be fine. The point of rise/fall is that you'll be less far away to avoid the perspectiveconvergence and still get the height of the building in the frame than you would've been without it; the question is whether you can get far enough way to keep it filling most of the frame and not get run over in the process.<br />

 

<a href=" title="Isle of Eriska Hotel by spodzone, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3569/3657302010_402ba57fe0_m.jpg" width="240" height="193" alt="Isle of Eriska Hotel" /></a><br />

Nice hotel, shame about the photo.

[jack_welsh]

<p>A great way to practice with LF, is to take the camera into the front yard. Then, practice without film. Make different movements and see what effect it has on the groundglass.<br>

Photo looks good, even with the car.</p>

[bruce_watson1]

<p>You're doing fine.</p>

<p>I often find that I have to tilt my camera up simply because I have limited front rise. So I tilt the camera up, then level and plumb the back, then tilt the lens stage forward to make it parallel with the film stage. Looks a little weird but works well.</p>

<p>One thing to note. Often a little keystoning is better than none at all. Why? It looks more "natural" to people. When people are standing on the sidewalk looking up a the buildings, they get a little convergence of line just because the top of the building is farther away.</p>

<p>Note too that often you'll want to completely eliminate keystoning from trees. That you might want to introduce some with buildings and eliminate it completely with trees isn't necessarily logical. But it seems to often be true. What can I say? Experiment with it and make your own decisions. That's what you got the camera for, yes?</p>

[dave_redmann]

<p>Tim H.--<br>

<em>Nice hotel, shame about the photo.</em></p>

<p>Are you paraphrasing The Monks?!</p>

 

[jnanian]

<p>hi michael<br>

nice contrast between the masonic temple for sale and the billowing church tower. <br /> they have already answered all your questions so i figured i would say - nice work!<br /> it takes a while to get use to LF but once you do, it will all be worth it ..</p>

 

[rob_tucher3]

<p>Go by the old sage architectural photographer's adage, "use the longest lens (with the most coverage) possible." It is probably your only lens at the moment, but coverage is key. But that said, sometimes shorter is better. You shot this with a 150mm. A 121mm Super Angulon covers 8x10, so a wider view with nearly unfettered movement would allow you enough rise, even standing flat on the ground and closer, to give you anything you want and then you can crop in some in the printing. My personal preference is to do the absolute best I can in the field with the finest lenses I can justify and most meticulous care to lay the image on film that I can, process for optimal results, and then worry about printing and digital tricks if still needed. The exact opposite of the PhotoShop approach. Neither is wrong, of course. But you do what you have to to get what you want.</p>

[keith_anderson7]

<p>Michael, if we all posted our bad photos instead of our good ones on this site, it would crash the servers immeidately due to data overflow. ;)</p>