Front Tilt or Reat Tilt on a Linhof Tech... Which Do You Use?

[Rick Heitman]

I beleive that only the aperture will affect depth of field. Tiliting the front lens will help bring in focus of the farest point but will not affetc depth of field.

[Capocheny]

Scott,

"before you tell me to stop cluttering the servers and just go ready Strobel's book, know that i have already ordered it and am anxiously awaiting it's arrival"

Get ready for a LOT of slogging as you go through Strobel's book. I absolutely hated reading it in spite of the fact that it's an immensely popular book. That said, there is an abundance of information in it...much of it of a very technical manner.

I started out reading Jim Stone's book, "A User's Guide to the View Camera" and found it a lot more understandable. The other books that are very good are the Sinar Handbooks... although they focused (sic) on Sinar cameras the principles are applicable to other view cameras.

Lastly, many of the users on this forum have a wealth of knowledge and experience and can make the journey a lot easier than many books. Ask the questions and heed the responses!

Enjoy the learning curve... it's only the beginning :>)

Cheers

[steve simmons]

I use front swing and tilt to rotate the plane of focus so that it more closely aligns with the plan of the subject. I use back swing and tilt to alter size and shape relationsips for objects in different parts of the scene. To use them interchangeably and without pre-thought is to miss one of the advantages of the view camera.

steve simmons www.viewcmera.com

[Bill_1856]

Steve, you do this on a Technika?

[steve simmons]

I was responding in general. Dyinga does not use a Technika as far as I know.

steve

[Frank Petronio]

base tilts rule, axis tilts drool

[Jeff Conrad]

Tilting the front or rear standard does affect the
DoF—increasing the tilt actually decreases the DoF. This isn’t
necessarily a problem, because the benefits of repositioning the plane of
focus often exceed the losses that result from the decrease in DoF. When
either standard is tilted, of course, the DoF is the angular space between
two planes that intersect in the plane of the lens.

The most difficult tradeoff between maximizing DoF and repositioning the
plane of focus arises in scenes that have both height and depth. This
situation is illustrated quite well in Harold Merklinger’s Addendum
to <cite>Focusing the View Camera</cite>. A PDF version is
available on his web site.

[Scott Rosenberg]

great responses, all.

jeff... i especially appreciate the link to Merklinger’s article. that really went a long way to clarifying things for me, especially the 'depth of field' issue noted early in this thread.

the learning curve for LF is pretty steep, but with assistance from this forum and the books i'm reading, i think i'm coming along. as an aside, i got my first real 4x5 chromes back from the lab taken on a recent trip to canada and am completely stunned. the detail is absolutely incredible... i'm totally sold on large format.

thanks again,

[Kirk Keyes]

Hi Scott,

I use a Technika IV and I use rear tilt quite often. I like the "near-far" look for landscapes that one gets doing this.

What I do is set the Technika on the tripod, place the lens on the camera and roughly focus it (no point in being precise at this point), and then adjust the framing by tilting the camera and tripod head until I get the framing I'm looking for. Since we are looking for near-far, that means the camera is pointing towards the foreground.

I then pull the top of the rear standard back away from the lens somewhat. This will change the plane of focus and also probably put the image out of focus. It will also change the framing a little on the foreground so I may readjust the framing a little.

I then go back and forth between making adjustments to the focus and adjusting the angle of the back. To do this I usually focus on a foregound object first, and then adjust the angle of the back until my distant object is in focus. I then go back and look at the foreground object to see if it is still in focus (sometimes it is not) and then I repeat that process. It only takes a couple of times to do this and get it all in focus.

The front tilt method doesn't require this extra work for focussing or framing. But then you don't get that near-far look either.

Another concern with front tilts is lens coverage - if you have a lens that has a smaller image circle, you can run out of coverage when you tilt the lens. This will result in vignetting of the image. I usually don't like that look... So if you have new lenses with huge image circles, you probably don't have to worry about that, but if you have older lenses, like a 135 f/5.6 Symmar or equivalent lens, you might.

Kirk

[steve simmons]

Tilting the front or rear standard does affect the DoF—increasing the tilt actually decreases the DoF???????????????????????????????

DOFis determined by reproduction ratio. Rotating the plane of focus does not really affect DOF.

steve simmons