Weston's lack of front tilt

[Rod Klukas]

How can you tell that they didn't use front tilt?

Jon

Both types of tilt will help with increasing depth of field.
When using rear tilt near objects will usually increase or 'Loom', in size and be slightly distorted. This phenomenon is the clue.
Front tilt will have no effect on the shape of objects, while still increasing depth of field.
As someone mentioned, many 8x10 cameras from this period were not fitted with tilt, as there primary usage was for portraiture. That is also
why they had rise/fall, to accommodate height differences.
A lens of limited coverage will sometimes benefit by use of back tilt for depth of field, where it's coverage does not allow for use of front tilt.
Hope this is useful.
Rod

[premortho]

My "go to" camera for many years (35) was an Ansco view. It had front rise and fall, so I just used the tripod tilt and rear tilt and swing to get what I "saw" in my minds eye. Probably I just learned how to work around the lack of front tilts. It's much easier to do this with the rear movements in my opinion.