Movements needed for city architecture

[ubiquitous]

Looking to get into LF. Primary draw to LF is movements for exterior architecture

in NYC. Want something that will correct converging verticals from across a city

street. What movements (and to what extent) does one need to do this? Also, how

wide a lens is recommended for this? Can I get by with a Shen Hao or comparable

field camera (I don't have a car and don't look forward to lugging a monorail around)?

[lacey_smith4]

the general rule is to keep the back straight (obvious), which keeps the verticals straight, and rise the front standard (or lower the rear), to raise the perspective to fill the frame as you wish.

 

How much of an effect is rise/fall/shift? -- well, it is fairly easy to estimate/calculate.

 

(distance from subject)*(Front Rise)/(lens extension) = rise in perspective point

 

Now, no front rise, no change in perspective, and the mid point of the frame is camera-eye level, so you get a lot of sidewalk/street. A 100 foot subject distance, with a 150 mm lens (lens extension = 150 at infinity) raised 25mm, raises the image frame center to a point 16.67 feet above camera level -- say, top of first floor architecture.

 

A 90 mm lens, same 100 foot distance, raised 25 mm, raises perspective 25 feet -- maybe, top of second floor is now mid-frame. But, many 90 mm lenses will not allow that sort of movement.

 

Walk around your neighborhood, and try things at approximate across street distances. You will not, with normal LF lenses, get very tall buildings with straight verticals beyond a few floors. A huge coverage lens (say, for an 11x14), on a 4x5 film, might allow perspective change approximating subject distance, but not much more.

 

As far as lens choice -- again, the larger the coverage, the more movements you will have. But, the angle of view is smaller as well, and most cameras do not have enough rise for huge proportional movements for longer lenses.

 

All in all, you can get the front view of museums and a few other things, limited to a few floors, but you will not get 28th floor vertically correct detail. You need distance, then a longer fl lens to narrow the field, and a modest rise will then work.

[brian_kennedy]

Barry, Lacey answered pretty much all of your questions (mainly that you won't get the whole building from across the street, and that front rise is the most important movement). A Shen Hao should have all the movements you want and it looks like quite a bargain at the price. I think front rise is 37mm on the Shen Hao, which should be more than adequate. As for monorails, not all are heavy or bulky -- I use an Arca-Swiss Discovery for the same uses that most people use a field camera.

[rob_barker]

Front rise is all that was needed to avoid converging verticals until recently. Now you'll get a good result with a Fuji S2 and a photoshop distortion plugin. Perspective control used to be the sole domain of view cameras but, in my humble opinion, those days are now gone.

 

There are three current reasons to go into large format photography:

 

Firstly, and by far the most significant, is the ability to place the plane of sharp focus where you want it - typically horizantally to allow near and far objects to appear perfectly sharp. You cannot achieve this with anything other than a view camera.

 

Secondly, view cameras slow you down. They make the process of taking a photograph an artform in itself. Mastering the tradecraft involved in achieving consistency with a view camera is immensely satisfying. It refines your previsualisation, technical knowledge and skill to a point where much of the staisfaction of producing an image is derived from the journey it involves. A successful final print is often just the icing on the cake.

 

Thirdly, the image quality when producing large prints is very impressive. This shows itself obviously in terms of sharpness, and subtely in tonal and colour gradation. You have to enlarge very large to clearly beat medium format though, and the visible difference is, quite frankly, marginal.

[lex_jenkins]

My experience is with 35mm gear but the same principles apply...

 

All that's needed is shift (technically, rise/fall) and some elevation.

 

I use a 28/3.5 PC-Nikkor on my Nikon SLRs. If I can't get enough rise from street level to compose as I'd like without encountering vignetting at the extremes, I'll try to gain elevation.

 

Gaining elevation is usually the tricky bit. I've set up shop in the bed of my pickup truck. Open air parking garages are good too.

 

If you can gain access to rooftops you'll encounter a relatively uncommon situation for architectural photography: the need to use fall or downward shift rather than rise. Make sure the field camera you're considering can accomodate this.

[leonard_evens]

I don't have too much to add except to emphasize some of the points already made. For a tall buiilding, from acrosss the street, you would need a very wide angle lens and plenty of movement, probably requiring the use of a bag bellows. Check the arithmetic in one of the previous answers.

 

One thing you can do to estimate just what you need is to make a viewing frame. You just cut out a rectangular opening of size 95 x 120 mm (the actual size of 4 x 5 film area). Make marks on the side so you can locate the center of the frame. Punch a hole in it and attach a heavy piece of string. Then go around the city looking a typical scenes you may want to photograph. First center the frame on the subject with sides vertical. Experiment with different distances of the frame from your eye, using the string and measure them. That will give you some idea of the needed focal length. Move the frame up and measure how far from the originally centered position you have to move it in order to get what you want in the frame. That will give you some of idea of how much rise you will need. After a certain amount of experimentation of this kind, you will get some idea of what kind of equipment you need, but don't expect miracles. Large format photography is still governed by basic geometry and the laws of optics.

[Sandeha Lynch]

I read somewhere recently that only a "masochist" would get into LF, but there are other reasons ... Rob Barker's second and third points are probably the main reasons why I'm getting into 4"x5" myself - it slows you down and forces you to refine your processes, and the image quality is impressive, (very).

 

"Large format photography is still governed by basic geometry and the laws of optics." True, and I'm grateful to read the details on convergence, lenses and distance here. Of course, you can just use "Skew" in Photoshop and resolve those problems, (and many others) but still, it's good to understand how these problems originate.

 

One further reason is the hardware itself. I don't 'think' I would be able to design and build a Nikon F4 all on my own, but I have just made a 4"x5" 90mm/200mm pinhole camera and am sorting out plans to make a set of bellows ... Check out all these "masochists" and the cameras they have made for themselves ... http://home.online.no/~gjon/jgcam.htm

[james_driscoll2]

Advice- and before you flame look at my books....1000 NY

Buildings and 1000 buildings of Paris- all shot on 4x5.

 

For 90% of the buildings you will shoot- front rise and shift are all

you will need. A field camera IS NOT THE WAY TO GO, if you

expect to do this alot. If you don't believe me rent a Toyo 4x5 field

one weekend and shoot 3 buildings and than the weekend after

rent a Sinar F2 and shoot 3 buildings-than make a choice.

 

The problem, and although you received many good responses

about movements-is that in a city you can't count on getting

"directly" in front of a building. There are trucks, dumpsters, and

lamposts in the way. The amount of movements you will need

sometimes are mind boggling. A field camera, altough suffcient

for sometime usage for your application, is the wrong way to go

in this scenario. A Sinar F2 only weighs 7 LBS, and can be

folded up pretty tightly.

 

Everything else will weigh the same (lenses, holders, tripod, etc)

so don't always look at the camera as the way to save weight.

You don't need a monster tripod for a Sinar F2 camera, it is not a

P2 (which weighs 14 lbs).

 

Since you are in NYC and can easily rent, I really think you

should try the field vs monorail for your self. There is a reason

why all of us pro architecture shooters use Sinar F2's and Arca's.

 

(of course someone will mention some photographer from the

1930's using a deardorff or something.....but he also used to

listed to have a 6 volt electrical system in his car....)

[donald_miller1]

There are other moves beyond front rise that allow you to cover more of a tall building across the street provided that you have a lens of adequate coverage. Those moves would be to tilt the camera front up...next bring the film plane (rear standard) to a "plumb" position...next bring the lens stage (front standard) to a plumb position this effectively increases front rise. I use this all of the time with my 4X5 (90mm lens) and my 8X10 (210 mm lens). This also gets past the problem of including too much of the foreground (street and sidewalk) in the use of wide angle lenses. If I were contemplating what you are wanting to do, I would not be reluctant to use a field camera. A monorail would probably do it easier. I would look to a 65mm or possibly a 47 mm SA lens.

[michael_briggs2]

<p>For the best results, my opinion is that a 4x5 view camera is still the way to go. </p>

 

<p>For architecture, as others have said, the most essential camera movement is front rise. Less often I use shift (front or back), then front tilt or swing for focus. Rarely do I use back movements to alter the perspective, though others probably do this more frequently.</p>

 

<p>The basic approach is to level the camera and keep both standards plumb (vertical) and use front rise to compose. Rising the front by approximately one-half of the vertical dimension of the film would bring the bottom edge of the building to the edge of the film. (Lacey's answer is the exact calculation -- I think my simple description is good enough for to answer your question.) So I think the ideal 4x5 camera would have 60 mm of front rise so that a shift of half the vertical dimension of the film could be made when the film is in portrait orientation. Actually, this is an exaggeration and 60 mm is excessive since one usually wants to keep some context in the photo and thus doesn't want to shift the bottom edge of the building exactly to the edge of the film. So something like 40 to 50 mm of front rise is desirable.</p>

 

<p>If you run out of direct front rise, you can always gain some indirect front rise by tilting the camera up, then tilting both standards back to plumb. I use a Linhof Technikardan 45S, which has 50 mm of front rise. Only infrequently do I find myself setting up additional front rise via tilting the camera and standards. This shows, that for me at least, 50 mm meets my usage in almost all cases.</p>

 

<p>The other limitation is the covering power of whichever lenses you will have. There is no point in having a camera that allows tremendous front rise if you will run out of image circle first.</p>

 

 

<p>I do some exterior architecture as an amateur. Working in the city from street level can be difficult and sometimes a really satisfactory photo showing most of a particular building just isn't possible because of distracting obstacles, or difficulties with camera positions. In this case you can go for a photo of a detail of a building, or as an amateur, just move on to a different building. A pro hired to photo the building would have to do something more clever, like gain elevation.</p>

 

<p>I don't think you will get very satisfactory photos of the entirety of really tall buildings from directly across the street. This will take a really wide-angle lens and, at least to me, the effect isn't very pleasant. For a tall building, I prefer to seek a more distant vantage, which might mean only a diagonal view from further down the block. The shortest lens that I use is the 72 mm Super-Angulon-XL. This lens offers tremendous coverage and allows photographing buildings in the 20 story class from surprisingly close distances. Alternatively, one can go for a photo of part of the buiding.</p>

 

<p>The problem with most wood field cameras for architecture is that they don't handle short focal lengths conveniently. With the Zone VI Classic that I once had, from about 120 mm and shorter, one had to tip the front standard backwards and then tilt the lensboard back to plumb (vertical). This was needed to focus the lens because the basic focus movement of the camera couldn't bring the standards close enough together. This is somewhat awkward and reduces the amount of front rise available. This isn't true of all wood field cameras, but it is something to be aware of as you consider the models. How close can the camera focus by simply bringing the standards together? Is the manufacturer's spec for the shortest usable focal length based on this maneuver, or upon using a recessed lensboard (which can also be awkward)? Also, some wood field camera lack interchangable bellows. To make the full use of the movements of today's best wide-angle wide-coverage lenses, a bag bellows is needed. If the field camera has only a fixed bellows, it will probably restrict the movements possible with short focal length lenses.<p>

 

<p>I use the Technikardan because it both folds for convenient travel and offers most of the capabilities of a monorail. If your budget is smaller (as mine was for many years), less expensive cameras can do the job with somewhat less convenience, either in transportation or in setting up. One inexpensive approach might be a monorail with a short rail. You could select a rail length so that you could focus on objects about 10 meters away with your longest lens and forgoe the ability to do closeups with that lens. The short rail would make the camera easier to transport.</p>

 

<p>I hope this gives you some things to think about. There was recently a somewhat related question: <i>4x5 - 90mm lens for general architectural work - what minimum image circle?</i> at <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005dCR">http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005dCR</a>.</p>

 

 

[cxc]

I just got back a couple of hours ago from shooting skyscrapers here in San Francisco. I was shooting a Sinar P, which, being 6'6", 240#, I don't mind backpacking around for a mile or two. I tested the coverage of my lenses, before the rise of the camera ran out.

 

Sure, you can take nice pictures in the city with a field camera, but you will definitely have more choices with a monorail. And there are monorails designed to use outside you might want to consider, like Gowland, Arca-Swiss, Toho, and Sinar F2. They are all lightweight enough for anybody to carry around. And you could definitely get a used Sinar F/1/2 off the 'Bay for no more than a new Shen-Hao would cost you. Lately the market has been flooded.

 

CXC

 

P.S. The Shen Hao is a fine camera and a real bargain at the price.

[brian_ellis3]

You need front rise at a minimum. However, front rise alone often won't allow you to include the top of the building. In that case you need two more movements, front and back tilt. With them you can point the camera up to include the top of the building then tilt the front and back forward to keep them parallel to the building.

 

How wide a lens you need and how much of any movement you need depend on the height of the building and your distance from it, so there is no fixed answer to those questions. However, if by exterior architecture in NYC you mean the skyscrapers, you'll need a very wide lens in most situations since the streets tend to be so narrow. I'm not sure it's even possible to include both the base and the top of many NYC skyscrapers when photographing them from the street but you surely are looking at a lens at least in the 65mm range to have any chance. OTOH, if you're thinking of architectural details in some of the older buildings then you wouldn't need such a short lens. You'll almost certainly want a camera with interchangeable bellows since most normal bellows allow for very little movement with lenses shorter than about 90mm.

[ubiquitous]

Thanks all for the answers--they've been very helpful.

[jon_grepstad1]

<p>Please note that in October 2015 my webpages on building large format cameras move to: jongrepstad.com</p>

<p>Jon Grepstad</p>