Please Help and give me some advise

Hallo all LF-experts!
Since last month I´m trying to do LF-photography. In some of my pictures I realised some strange kind of OOFs or "distortion". Most of the pictures where taken with a Schneider 210/5,6 Symmar lens at high f-stops and with a short distance to the objects.
There is a kind of distortion in the pic. "box and eggs" and also in the pics "beer and cigar". There is also the phenomena that the lover right part of the pictures looks somehow out of focus but the camera was lined up very straight to the table. The bottle and the glass seems to lean a bit to the left and the plate with the fuits seems to be distorted an the right side. Is it the lens? Is the lensboard bent? Or is it me.

Please give me your advise what to do or what to check.

The pictures are only Polaroid-proofs, so please excuse the poor quality.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/megapic...7627626190965/

pure perspective
you need a longer lens
see other related threads on this RECENT.....

Hi! And welcome to the LF side of life! :D

Are you sure the bottle was 100% level on the ground glass before you took the picture? If not maybe the polaroid sheet wasn´t 100% level in the holder? Hard to tell. Shoot something completely level and make sure its level on the GG. Make 2 shots without changing anything and compare. If one is level and the other is not I would guess it´s the sheet that is not level in the holder. Also make sure that there are no movements applied if you want to shoot a test picture.

I can´t really see anything unsharp in the lover right parts in the pictures. The picture with the apples and prunes look sharp to me...:)

Nice shots btw!

/J.S

"Please give me your advise what to do or what to check."

johnielvis is right , a longer lens would help. As you get closer the distortions grow.

Another problem will be you need to change the plane of focus to remove the distortion which will reduce your DOF. It's a dance that will make you crazy, compromise is the best solution.

Rise cancels tilt, shift cancels swing, for distortion BUT there goes the DOF.

Have fun with it.

Nice images! Don't obscess over details.

Thank you all for your reply.
It seems, I really need a longer lens, I hope a 300mm would match.

All objects like the bottle and the glass were in level, I leveled the table and checked the level with the GG-lines also. Therefore I was surprised by the results eg. distortion. Well, the 210mm is a 50 mm in the 35mm world and there this lens is not known for distortion. O.K. I have to make an invest in a 300mm or 360mm lens. But there is this strange OOF behavior at the lower right part of some pics. The left side is sharp in focus you can see all the structure of the wood the right side is very soft. No shift or tilt applied, the standards were absolutely in vertical (double checked) level. Maybe, the Pola-sheet was not straight in the cassette. I´m curious to see the real film shots.

I think I am not too critical with my first pictures but I´m used to deliver perfect results as well in my job as in my photographing passion.

Sorry for some mistakes in my writing my English is very poor.

George

I have just looked around for a longer lens and found a Rodenstock 360/6,8 Sironar N-MC.
Do you think I can use it for table tops with my Sinar P and standard bellows or would I need some bellow extension. And is this lens useable for portraits?

Thank you for your answers in advance.

George

Can´t help you with that. But I have used my only lens, a Schneider 150mm f 5.6 lens for some porttraits with excellent results...it gives a pleasent bokeh.

Don´t worry about your English...I´m from Sweden...:D

The Beer and Cigar 0003-2 looks like the film plane was tilted backwards, which causes the bottom of the frame to bow outwards and the top inward. 0004-2 however looks like it's pretty straight.

I don't see anything wrong with Box & Eggs, but that might be because the shapes are so rounded that they don't show distortions much. The box lid looks crooked; that could be due again to back tilt but it's really hard to tell with that subject.

Hallo Polyglot!
Your diagnosis seems plausible. The problem is, there was no tilt of the back. Both standard were upright only the axis (the monorail) was tilted forward by 25 degr. But maybe that´s what yout mean, the filmplane shouldn´t be upright?
Thank you for analysing.
George