Why Would One Ever Need Front Tilt on a WA Lense ?

[scott_fleming1]

I should have gotten this in on the 'tilt' thread just down the page

but that thread got pretty lengthy and seems to have reached a

stopping point.

 

Almost any other movement I can see using. Dykinga likes to use

back tilt to ephasize foreground. OK. Shift either way, swing

(Dykinga shows and excellent example of this) ... I can grasp but

why would one ever need front tilt with a lense that at even f16 is

focused from a bit past arm's length to infinity?

 

Thanks.

 

Scott Fleming, River Run Ranch, Texas

[kevin_kolosky]

becasue you might not be able to shoot at f 16, and because you might be shooting very close up.

[foraker]

If it's a WA lens, why not just tilt the camera forward a bit and then use front tilt to get a plane of sharp focus? The convergence caused by this tends to be negligible.

[donald_miller1]

To limit the amount of information that is portrayed in the upper areas of the image.

[scott_fleming1]

I new there must be SOME reason.

 

Donald could you please elaborate? Are you talking about purposely throwing some part of the scene OUT of focus?

 

Thanks.

[ellis_vener_photography]

It will depend on the specific image. For landscape work it is quite possible that you would never need to tilt the front standard. For some still life and architectural work you may sometimes need it when you need to keep the rear standard erect for perspective rendering reasons. Personally I try to use it as little as possible

[noshir_patel]

One of the best ways to use a wide angle lens is to get VERY close to your foreground in order to emphasize it against a landscape (you see this over and over in landscape photography). Like a small group of flowers. Maybe it's not an arms length away, but a finger's length...

[scott_fleming1]

Now I oughta have to pay you for that one Noshir. I did not realize the distances were THAT accute.

[leonard_evens]

If I understand what Dykinga says in his book, he actually seldom uses front tilts, but he does use rear tilts to change the plane of focus. Of course, depending on how he has the camera set up, that can also have other effects, but the basic question is still there. Why would he need to do that if, with a 75 mm lens at f/16, he can focus say from 1.8 meters to infinity. Well, I can see two reasons. First, he may be using a pickier criterion for sharpness. I got 1.8 meters by choosing a coc of diameter 0.1 mm. If he, as many people do, chooses a coc of .05, his hyperfocal distance would be twice as great, and so he could only focus from 3.6 meters to infinity. That might be reasonble if he expect to make large prints which people are going to look at from very close up. Second, it may be that the closest part of his subject is even closer than 1.8 meter. It might be inches away from the lens, for example. In any event, by tilting the back slightly, he may accomplish other aims and also improve his focus in the process.

[scott_fleming1]

Yes, Mr. Dykinga seems to be a back tilt man and it certainly works for him. You and Noshir appear to agree here and I'm making notes.

 

And Ellis, I hear you. I knew I had superseded the 'pretzel compulsion' as posters here have warned about. Now I'm realizing that just because one has front tilt capability does not mean you need to use it. Much experimentation going on around here.

 

Thanks

[david_caldwell]

Few of Dykinga's images are taken with the camefra mounted within 3 feet of the horizontal plane. The lower the camera to the ground, the greater the need for lens tilt to bring both the foreground and distant landscape into focus. This is all predictable from the Scheimflug (sp?) principle.

[john lehman, college alask]

A specific example for Donald's suggestion. Awhile back I did a picture for our study abroad program which showed one of our students holding a globe in front of her. I needed a WA lens for the perspective (which would have had both globe and model in focus), but wanted the globe sharp and the model our of focus. Front tilt backwards did the trick with no distortion.

[cxc]

You may not need tilt per se, but you might still utilize the mechanism to achieve indirect rise.

[roger_michel]

the answers are already here i suppose, but as someone who

(a) uses extreme wide angle lenses a lot and (b) often uses front

tilt, i thought i'd weigh in. in short, i use tilt (usually back tilt)

because i am often very close to foreground elements and also

because i like to make them "loom." i love juxtaposing small

foreground details with large background subjects, and there is

often no way to get everything sharp front to back without a tilt.

having said that, one of my favorite combos during the past two

years has been the 110 xl on 8x10. no tilts are possible there,

so you must do it by stopping down. not really a problem given

the angle of view.