photographing tall buildings

[AnselAdamsX]

I have been photographing some tall churches with a Nikkor 90mm f/8 and in a few cases I ran out of shift (lens not camera). So I tried pointing the camera up and tilting both standards forward and seem to be able get that to work. I'm wondering why that would work. To me there shouldn't be any difference between direct or indirect rise. I use a bag bellows and made sure it was all pulled out of the way and my lensboards are 6 3/8 inch square so I don't think that is blocking anything. Any insights?

Thanks
Chris

[alec4444]

There actually is no difference. Same thing happened to me today: was photographing a tall building with my 11x14 and ran out of rise. Keeping the maximum front standard rise I tilted the front of the camera up and then made both standards perpendicular to the ground. That gave me an extra bit of rise which was enough for my needs.

--A

[Jack Flesher]

The IC of the lens did not change, so you may have inadvertantly applied an old trick -- adding rear tilt on the front standard to gain some additional rise when you run out of IC.

Since the building is relatively co-planar to the back standard, you can impart a few degrees of reverse tilt up front and add several precious mm of additional rise while not seriously deteriorating focus -- in fact with many lens' curvature, this may actually help focus toward the outer edges of the IC...

[Walter Calahan]

at a single bound

look up into the sky . . .

[Alan Davenport]

X, maybe even tho you tilted the standards, they didn't make it back all the way to truly vertical, so there was less rise relative to the film? That seems like the only logical answer since the image circle isn't going to get larger.

[Brian Ellis]

"So I tried pointing the camera up and tilting both standards forward and seem to be able get that to work. I'm wondering why that would work"

It works because you don't use up image circle with back tilts and swings as you do with front movements. Front rise created vignetting becausse you were moving the lens axis (and so the image circle) away from the center of the film. So you needed a large image circle to avoid vignetting and apparently yours wasn't large enough. When you stopped using front rise and switched to back tilt you no longer were moving the lens axis/image circle as you were with the front rise. Instead the lens axis remained centered on the film and the film moved within the image circle as you moved the back forward. So you needed a much smaller image circle than you did with front rise. Using back movements instead of front is one way to get away with using lenses that have a relatively small image circle.

[alec4444]

(lens not camera)

Sorry about my earlier response, I misunderstood. Or, well, I didn't pay attention.. :o

--A