My commercial days having concluded, I would like to replace my veteran Omega 45F view camera with an inexpensive, used 4x5 field camera, since I no longer need wide-angle and bag bellows capabilities or considerable movements. I do want portability, convenience, and a lighter load. I have no experience with the folding cameras, however, and the one feature I have used a great deal in portraiture (my primary subject going forward), is the raised back/dropped front combination, so that I can place the lens at eye level when desired and recompose the subject upwards in the frame. It seems to me that I may use a good 3" of displacementwith the camera level, a 210mm (my one lens now), and subjects typically 5.5-8 ft from the camera.

Field cameras lacking (generally, at least) rising backs, I recognize that on such a camera without a drop bed and, say, a maximum 1" lens fall, tilting the camera forward and bringing the back and lens to perpendicular again adds effective back rise. My concern is whether the backward tilt will be adequate to restore perpendicularity. I'm no geometer. Some models have backward tilt of only 15 degrees. Perhaps someone with experience with this kind of work (pretty straightforward, traditional portraiture) would share whether this is likely to be a restriction, given the general parameters cited above. I don't have ready access to tryout models at present.

Much obliged.