What ever happened to rear swings AND tilts on field view cameras?

[Alan Townsend]

I am returning to some 4x5 photography after being away for about 25 years and am finding lots of misinformation around on film photography including movements on view cameras.

Personally, I do not photograph buildings or cereal boxes, so never had any need for any front movements at all. There are no pine trees where I live. I photograph nature, which has no strait lines or right angles. However, I often make use of rear swings and/or tilts to incline the plane of focus for improving depth of field.

I find youtube videos and other instructions online recommending front swings and tilts for this and find many so-called field cameras with rear tilts only. And those are from the bottom, not the center, which is much more convenient. What is wrong with this picture? How has misinformation crept into the knowledge base of humanity? Rear swings and tilts do not distort anything, though this seems to be what everyone thinks today. They do not require any additional coverage, and center the image on the field of view, make light falloff symmetrical.

I am currently building a lightweight 4x5 with rear swings and tilts only, since these don't exist in the market. The front part of the camera is greatly simplified and rigidified in this case. Only a small and square bellows is needed at the rear of the camera. The front is basically a system of rigid extension tubes on a rear box. Mine will have only 4 inches of focus travel, with 5 inches of bellows draw. I will have front extensions to allow my 90mm, 135mm, 240mm, and 480mm lenses to function together. The 90mm is on a recessed lens board, the 135mm is on the front of the basic box, the 240mm is on an extension box, along with the 480mm. This lens set is designed so that they all have infinity focus with the rear standard in the same position, giving the same four inches of focus travel for all.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

[Jim Fitzgerald]

I've built many cameras. 8x10's, 8x20 and four 14x17's and they all have rear tilts and swings. My latest 8x10 has asymmetrical tilts on the rear along with swings and base tilts. I've always seen the benefit of this and I'm a landscape tree guy.

[Larry Gebhardt]

Sounds like an interesting project. Here are my thoughts: The bellows sounds limiting for closeup and macro without remounting the lenses. That would preclude me from buying your camera, but maybe not others. Having a heavy 480mm lens on a long extension will require all that rigidity you are planning for the front standard. Having an extension for each lens will likely weigh more than allowing the bellows to extend more. But for my normal set of lenses, 90, 135, 200, and 300mm it would probably work just fine.

Rear tilts do change the shape of the subject compared to front tilts. As Steve Simmons describes it on pages 59 and 60 of Using the View Camera:
Front Tilt: "The subject's shape remains the same because the top and bottom of the film plane area remain the same distance from the center of the lens."
Rear Tilt: "However since the back tilt adjustment changes the relative distances between the center of the lens and the top and bottom of the film area, there is a change in the shape of the subject."

I agree that base tilts are not as easy to use as axis tilts. That's the main reason I tilt the lens even when the shape of the subject doesn't matter to me. It's also the main reason I've thought about replacing my Chamonix N1 with an F2.

[Vaughn]

No mis-information...just a wide-ranging set of needs by different photographers and cameras to match.

I find that I pay attention to the geometry on the GG and how back movements will influence that geometry -- do I want the trees to loom over the composition, or do I want them to direct the attention straight upwards? For example, perhaps there is a leaning tree along the edge of the frame I want to make parallel to the edge of the frame while keeping the camera level. While I do not worry about the changing shape of a boulder, nor worry too much that tilt will be changing the relative size of everything above and below the line of rotation of the tilt, I am aware of it and will use it to my advantage in creating the image if needed.

My 5x7 camera is an 100+ year old beautiful beastie with back tilt and swing (geared) and only front rise -- I make it work. My 4x5 has full front movements and just tilt and swing in the back (a 2 lb Gowland PocketView monorail). The 8x10 (Zone VI) and 11x14 (Chamonix) are more modern traditional wood field folders...full movements back and front, except no back shift nor rise.

The 5x7:

[Alan Townsend]

That looks similar to my old Ansco 5x7 field camera that was stolen from me around 1995. I couldn't rack and whole bed forward or backward. Pretty heavy, but decent camera I used for many years.

Many don't seem to understand that the "distortion" caused by swings or tilts of either front or back are identical. This is the misinformation I was referring to. I make no effort to level anything, but I know many do. The leveling thing comes from architectural/product photography of boxes in general, and avoiding "perspective distortion", which to me, is a misnomer. Perspective is real from any position. Removing perspective is in fact, the distortion. Just an opinion.

I recall very well a photography text book from around 1900 showing a "field camera" with only rear swings and tilts, and thinking yes, that is all that I need. Simplification is good.

Thanks for the input.

[Ulophot]

Alan, welcome back. That's a long time away!

I couldn't build a camera id you paid me. Fortunately, I found a Tachihara 4x5, which does have tilt and swing on the back, albeit no back rise and no shift front or back. It's sufficient for my purposes.

I'm surprised that you say that no cameras with these features are available. I'm also, I presume, not understanding what you mean about front and back movements creating the same "distortion," since the lens movements do not alter the relation of the subject to the plane of projection as the back ones do.

In any case, I would generically affirm your assertion of mis-info on the web; photography could hardly hope to escape the fate of every other branch of knowledge in this vast domain.

Looking forward to seeing photos of your completed camera.

[Dugan]

Vaughn, beautiful camera... Eastman #2 ?

[Corran]

Any and all movements on one standard can be duplicated at the other, with a commensurate tilt of the entire camera and rise/fall of the standard to compensate if necessary for positional changes of the ground glass. One may have a personal preference as to their operation of a camera or thoughts on the efficacy of certain movements, of course.

Personally I use whatever is available on the camera, but default to front tilt and rise/fall as needed and rarely use rear movements. Instead, changes in geometry of the subject are often done by tilting of the camera, though if available I have occasionally indeed used rear tilt.

[Alan Townsend]

Larry Gebhardt,

Thanks for the information. So, apparently Steve Simmons is responsible for this misinformation in 2015 in that book. It's simply not true. Distortion, where we mean things being made larger or smaller than they are relatively, is a function of distance from the film to the plane of sharp focus. Only in simple lenses, which focus on a spherical surface rather than a flat plane, would that be true that if the edges of the film are the same distance from the lens center there is no distortion, which also requires curved film to make that same distance true for the center of the film.

Today, many are learning that it's better to use front swings and tilts for depth of focus control, which is just not the case. Either work identically in all ways. Front movements require much more lens coverage angle to work, and result in less uniform illumination with many lenses.

This may explain my theory on why more modern view camera designs are short in the rear swing and tilt department. If the front swings and tilts were not centered on the lens center, they would also be used much less often due to difficulty using them.

Thanks for the discussion.

[AA+]

In the 1960s I had a buddy who was the U of Chicago official photographer, the late David Windsor. He had a Kodak 8x10 view camera with rear tilts, but nothing in the front. He told me it took so long to adjust the camera with only rear tilts, that the spectators would get tired and go away. He hired me to add front tilts (using a machine shop), and this addition worked very well for him.

Best wishes --- Allen Anway