Photographing in tight spaces

[poco]

I've been shooting in small rooms, which is fairly new to me, and am wondering how to handle some of the difficulties involved. Sometimes I can shoot through doorways into them, but more often I have no choice but to go with my wides and deal with the distortion that gets me. To minimize that, I've found that a slightly lower angle of view can help -- it doesn't eliminate distortion, but at least keeps it from sprawling across a huge area of the negative. But even this only helps in some cases.

So here's the situation: you're faced with a small room, maybe ten foot square, and would like to do more than isolate details. Understanding there's no magic bullet answer, I like to know how you'd approach it?

[David A. Goldfarb]

It's a tough situation. I think 75mm is the widest lens that looks natural in that situation, but I'll use a 65mm or 55mm (usually with some cropping to a more panoramic format) if I have to.

Shifts can help. It sometimes works to photograph along one wall and shift in the opposite direction to get the rest of the room.

I'm more inclined to go for a high angle than a low angle, usually. Sometimes the "aerial" perspective works.

[Ted Harris]

Like David I am more inclined to go for a high angle in most cases. I often have to do something similar to what you describe when shooting in restaurants. Frequently, a 75mm lens just won't do it. In those situations I use a Noblex 150F. In fact, the first two jobs like that I had to do paid for the camera.

[Armin Seeholzer]

For this is my 47 XL my favorit lens and if possible looking not to have something in the nearest foreground!
And I take the lens exatly in the middle of the room ot lower and not higher, but there are also exeptions of it!

[Brian Ellis]

Use a longer lens. Make separate photographs of the parts of the room that you want to include in the photograph. Stitch them together in Photoshop.

[David Karp]

If you have a wide enough lens, you can sometimes include too much in the photo and then crop away the distortions on the edges. I realize that sometimes this is not possible, and you do give up real estate on the film when you do this, but when it is possible it does work.

[Gordon Moat]

Basically, I agree with the 75mm approach as the widest. Using a longer lens and arriving at a more panoramic final result by using overlapping images would be another approach. If you have a longer lens with good coverage, you can just use rear standard shift to control a two image overlap.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat

[Larry H-L]

I once saw photos of a LF photog placing a front-surface mirror on the wall, pointing the camera into the mirror to include more of a small room.