well the latest example you've given might prove overkill on both counts...you might have enough dof at f8 even with the 210 if the scene begins and ends near infinity depending on a lot of other things that i can't see and haven't been told.
well the latest example you've given might prove overkill on both counts...you might have enough dof at f8 even with the 210 if the scene begins and ends near infinity depending on a lot of other things that i can't see and haven't been told.
If you use a very small circle of confusion because you want to enlarge your photos to maximum and allow people to view up close, then you don't get much depth of field at all.. In fact, the only part of a shot that is totally in focus (if you ignore coc) is the plane of focus. So if you want to avoid diffraction and want the maximum sharpness on parts of your picture and you CAN tilt to get focua, then you probably should.. Then you can decide what parts of your picture you want to get CLOSE to critical focus..
I personally am with your friend on this one..
Tim
1) A lens is agnostic with regards to what size of film is there behind it - that is, it provides the same DOF at any f stop, regardless of format.
2) With regards to focus first, tilt second versus tilt first, focus second - at one level, the answer is that it really does not matter as long as you eventually end up with the (or near the) optimum combination of movements and f stop. Which one works for you might be a function of individual idiosyncracies. As pointed out, it eventually becomes fluent, something that you perform with little conscious thought much of the time.
Time permitting, you can experiment with various combinations that provide you with the optimum setting. Typically, focus at one extreme and make movements while looking at the ground glass to see if the movements are making things better. The exact method depends upon the mechanism for the movement. For example, if you have base tilts, as you tilt down, the bellows extension at the bottom will change less than at the top, which means the bottom areas of the scene (and the top part of the inverted ground glass) are going to be 'sliding' into focus to a greater extent than the top. So, you would focus on the distance, tilt to bring the foreground in, refocus to bring the distance back in if it has drifted out, tilt a bit more and so on till everything is in focus. If you want to see if movements have helped, without movements, mark the focus spread (make marks on the focussing bed when focussed on the nearest object and then the furthest object). Now predict the required movement and again mark off the extremes of the focus spread - if the focus spread has reduced, movements have helped.
My suggestion is that, at least initially, it is useful to visualize the entire area as a three dimensional volume to predict the combination required. You can then see how close your guess was. Do this for a little while and soon, it just becomes part of the hand-eye-brain mechanism and becomes fluent.
Cheers, DJ
I am with your friend if the trees are less than 25 feet tall (considering the distance from front to rear as my basis) and with the nearest ground desired to be in focus. Given this scenario, I would use front tilt and focus 1/3 of the distance down from the top of the nearest tree and also the nearest point of desired focus. My plane of focus would be the from the nearest ground to 1/3 down from the top of the tree. I would determine the tilt needed before I even thought of stopping down the lens.
I use tilt on virtually every landscape shot and I try to keep my F stop to F22 or less on 4X5.
Of course time and experience will determine what works best for you.
I'm guessing you are describing a situation where the closer tree is lower on the frame with the further tree above. Generally since my Wisner doesn't have easy detents for perpendicularity of front/rear standards, I have to focus all quadrants regardless thus using movements adds nothing I would not have to do anyway. On the issue of using tilt I might agree with your friend as long as the trees took up about the same percentage of frame vertical and the tilt didn't throw any other elements out of focus. Although just stopping down is likely to still do an acceptable job of providing good resolution, one could expect using a small amount of tilt would squeeze out a bit more resolution by moving the critical focus plane say from the mid height of the first tree to mid height of the second tree. Now as the closer tree becomes a larger percentage of the frame's vertical, one ought to decrease any tilt accordingly and focus stronger on the closer tree. Also if the front tree is the more compelling central element, one may decide to focus critically on it in order to exact the best fine details bottom to top. Thus as in many landscapes there are considerations to be noted and compromises to be chosen depending on how one wishes to render a scene. ...David
Guys, this thread is like 8 years old.
I wonder if they are still friends. :-)
cheers,
Phong you are a maniac! You must be reviewing your technique also. I wondered the same thing.
Richard
The poster ditched LF for digital a few years back, and if the friend is who I think he is, he's also GD (Gone Digital).
No further responses will be necessary
Michael E. Gordon
http://www.michael-gordon.com
Geez, and I was all set to enter the fray...Originally Posted by Phong
uh, never mind, I guess.
Reading this interesting old thread raises the question: are two lenses of the same focal length likely to show the same characteristic depth of field if they are of different design?
For instance, I have a Tele-Xenar 360 mm, and a Zeiss Tessar 360 mm. One is a retrofocus design, with a nodal point of about 270 mm at infinity, while the Tessar is dead sharp at 360 mm.
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