Portrait lens focal length for 4x5: distortion, FOV and focusing distance

[feppe]

Without using movements, your main advantage using 4x5 is that the larger negative allows you to make bigger final prints. If the maximum print you are doing is 32cm by 40cm (roughly), then there is almost no point to using 4x5 over medium format, even 6x4.5. What large format allows is much larger prints, and movements. I believe in using a format for the advantages it allows.

Thanks again everyone for very helpful input. I'm not entirely sold on LF, so this is all valuable insight!

Big prints is exactly what I would be looking to do. I have a very particular direction with full-length glamour I'm going for, which would require the choice to make much larger prints than mentioned. Another is having the access to shallow DOF, and achieving gorgeous bokeh in background - though both are quite possible with the Mamiya C220 I use.

Movements might be useful for some shots, but from my understanding shooting people with a non-TLR LF camera when there's any chance of subject movement is iffy at best. The descriptions I've found here of using small apertures with deep DOF and the acompanying (massive) continuous light sources, or large apertures by pre-focusing on strings where the subject is placed at the last moment, are not exactly suitable for the type of shooting I do. I'm not talking about spray and pray (for the right shot), but posed but dynamic poses. TLR would be perfect for this reason - and the reason why Mr Gowland created his cameras -, although I would lose movements.

Having the choice for tight facials is mainly a nice-to-have feature, but the more I think about it, I could just stick with MF for those, as they are not part of the very particular direction mentioned

[theBDT]

Yes-

However, before you edited your original post, the word 'educated' was written in all caps,
and the implication of the negative was clear.
The 'dancing around' began there.

Are you serious?!

First of all, there is a reason people can edit their posts. I thought better of myself, and made an edit. The capitalized "EDUCATED" was up for, maybe, two minutes. Next are you going to jump on the typos I miss and then edit out two minutes later, as well?

And if the "negative" was "clear," why didn't you point it out at first? Perhaps because you realized how silly it was to pick up on something that was "negative" for all of two minutes? But alas you couldn't quite help yourself, and so the "dancing" began?

I see you have a habit of shouting particular words, so perhaps I just read it the wrong way.

And I see you have a habit of picking fights over nearly inconsequential issues. Perhaps from now on we would both do well to give each other the benefit of the doubt...

I won't be adding more to this, unless it's on topic,
but I would expect not to have to deal with double standards here.

Double standards? What? Non sequitur... But I do appreciate the fact that you won't "be adding more to this..."

[feppe]

Are you serious?!

<snip>

I know I'm new here, but I would appreciate if you could take this elsewhere.

[rdenney]

Some basic truths that may be hiding in previous posts:

1. Perspective is entirely controlled by the distance from the camera to the subject. Lenses do not distort (at least most lenses don't), but some focal lengths are more suited to the distance we want more than others.

2. Basing the proper distance from camera to subject on how we meet each other isn't necessarily all that accurate. Our eyes and brains are highly adept at interpreting three-dimensional space, and as such don't notice the perspective effects that become quite visible in photographs.

3. Each photographer has his own view of what constitutes a good portrait. Arguing about these differing viewpoints isn't going to help the OP much.

4. The difference between 240 and 300 isn't exactly huge. A 300 mm lens focused at 1600 mm will be at 1:5.3, and the subject plane will be 21x23". A 240mm lens focused at the same distance will be at 1:6.7, and the subject plane will be 27x33". That has the effect of cropping off 20% of each dimension, turning 4x5 into 3.2x4. That's not exactly the same as going to medium format. The effect on the cropping, by the way, is the same ratio of the lens focal length. So, to turn 4x5 into, say, 6x7 medium format, would require using about a 165mm and then cropping it down to what a 300mm lens would have covered. Were it me, I would use the 240 to provide more flexibility for focusing, and if I needed to crop a bit, I would crop a bit.

Rick "who'd rather be faced with cropping then tearing out a wall" Denney