Need Advice on View Camera Movements

[JWaldinger]

Hey everyone,

I am new to LF and new to this forum! I am still understanding when to use certain movements such as front/rear swing, tilt etc. I took this shot yesterday, It is literally my first 4x5 chrome shot on provia 100f at f/32. When I got the slide back I noticed that the pilars (highlighted in white) were not in total focus. After going online to find out the effects that certain movements had, I thought that this particular composition would call for a front swing movement to get the desired focus to be perfect. Is this a correct assumption? I would not want to alter the composition as it stands now, and if I were to do a front swing, would I focus on the pilars and stop down or focus on the power plant as I had done in this photo?

thanks in advance.

-j

[Robert Hughes]

Greetings, j, and welcome to the view camera world. As you say, I would give it a bit of tilt/swing to put the foreground into focus. Have you read through the articles on the LFPhoto home page (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/)? I found these to be excellent sources of information.

[Kirk Gittings]

J,
Glad you made it here. I hope you get some help. I don't have the time to comment much right now but just note that most T/S with a VC are really small adjustments.

[Kirk Gittings]

Greetings, j, and welcome to the view camera world. As you say, I would give it a bit of tilt/swing to put the foreground into focus. Have you read through the articles on the LFPhoto home page (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/)? I found these to be excellent sources of information.

Slight tilt forward of the front standard to put the foreground in focus (tilt the back and you will disturb the leveling) and very slight swing of the back counter clockwise?

[JWaldinger]

Slight tilt forward of the front standard to put the foreground in focus (tilt the back and you will disturb the leveling) and very slight swing of the back counter clockwise?


Hi Kirk,

Thanks for the reply! Just for my own knowledge, what would happen to the image if a front swing clockwise were used instead of a rear counterclockwise swing?

thanks!

[Robert Hughes]

J, you may want to track down a copy of "The Camera" by Ansel Adams - available in almost any library. He has whole chapters devoted to camera movements.

[JWaldinger]

J, you may want to track down a copy of "The Camera" by Ansel Adams - available in almost any library. He has whole chapters devoted to camera movements.


Haha thanks Robert, its actually in transit as we speak! :) In the meantime Ive been scouring the net to find info on movements and have been successful to an extent, but there's still some things that are a bit hairy to me....

[William McEwen]

A good rule is to start with everything at zero.

Camera and tripod are level, and no swings or tilts.

And as Kirk said, most of the time you need very little adjustment.

[jeroldharter]

You can swing either the front or the back. I have an asymmetrical rear swing on my camera which is really easy to use/focus so I lean toward rear movements (which are sometimes easier to reach on an 8x10 also). A little front tilt can help with depth of field. however, if you have objects between the foreground and the background like trees or other verticals, then tilts mess up the focus on what's in the middle and require a lot of stopping down.

One thing I never remember: should you swing before you tilt?

[dave_whatever]

I don't think swing would help in this shot - yes you'd get the fence in focus but i recon you'd lose the factory bigtime. I recon just tilt and a bit of stopping down would see you home and dry in this case.

[pocketfulladoubles]

Don't swing and tilt reduce DOF in the process? I'm not sure you'd be too much better off in this case. Perhaps just suck it up and stop down more. Diffraction never killed anyone. You'll probably gain more than you lose. Or, use a wider angle lens, and crop.

[MIke Sherck]

Most of us use camera movements by looking through the ground glass to see the effect. For your problem, there are four movements which could potentially have been used:

1. You could have used front tilt, tilting the front standard slightly downward to try to bring the fence into the plane of focus. You'd have to be careful, because when using movements there's always an opposite and sometimes unequal reaction. In this case, you risk losing focus on the tall smokestacks. Since the fence posts are also approaching the camera on the right, front tilt may not be sufficient to get all of them in focus.

2. You could have used tilt on the rear standard. This has all of the problems of using tilt on the front standard, plus using movements on the rear standard also tends to distort objects close to the camera with respect to more distant objects. For example, in your picture, tilting the rear standard to bring the fence posts into focus would also have made them grow in size. Try it and see!

3. You could have used swing on the front standard to rotate the plane of focus so that the objects to the right are in focus. It's surprising just how small of a movement is often necessary. I doubt this movement would have put the factory out of focus but it might have put the objects to the left out of focus. Then you'd need to use a smaller stop on the lens, to increase the depth of field that way.

4. Finally, you could have used swing on the rear standard (if your camera has it,) the same way as on the front, with the same problems plus again the movement would have made the fence posts appear somewhat larger. Sometimes you don't mind this change of relative perspective, sometimes you do. If you know to watch for it then you can decide for yourself whether you want to use it or not.

Make all movements and check the results with the lens wide open, then when you think everything is in focus, stop down a couple of stops just to be sure (if conditions permit you to stop down, of course!) Sometimes movements aren't sufficient to get absolutely everything in focus. In that case, if you can get the important stuff about equally out of focus and stop down, you can often get everything in acceptable focus. Hmm. That may not have made much sense; sorry, it's late and been a long day and tomorrow will be worse. It makes sense once you've done it a couple of times. Don't be afraid to open the shutter, look through the ground glass, and twiddle things to see what happens!

I hope that helps. The book "Using the View Camera" by Steve Simmons is the most helpful explanation and demonstration of movements I've encountered. It would help you.

Mike

[JWaldinger]

Thanks Mike! Your explanation was very helpful and I will pick up a copy of that book you recommended! From what Ive heard from others, it looks like the front swing would be the most effective movement to use, but I will use other movements to record the effects regardless.

cheers!

-j

http://www.justinwaldinger.com

[Steve Sherman]

I follow a simple formula. Decide the three dimensional shape of your composition. If the composition is a square cube, the only help you have is F stops. If however, your composition resembles a rectangular cube in any way then swing / tilt the lens TOWARDS the direction of the longest plane of the rectangle OR swing / tilt the rear standard AWAY from the longest plane of the rectangle. If possible, always use rear movements as those use the least amount of the lens image circle.

Movements are relative to the focal length of the lens, short lens, ever so slight movement, the longer the lens the greater the movement, although movements NEVER resemble those used in advertisements to sell view cameras.

Cheers

[jeroldharter]

I don't think swing would help in this shot - yes you'd get the fence in focus but i recon you'd lose the factory bigtime. I recon just tilt and a bit of stopping down would see you home and dry in this case.

To my eye, the factory looks roughly parallel to the fence line so I would think that swings would keep both in line. As it stands, the front smokestack appears sharper than the rear one.

[dave_whatever]

To my eye, the factory looks roughly parallel to the fence line so I would think that swings would keep both in line. As it stands, the front smokestack appears sharper than the rear one.

Parallel but a long way away from each other - especially at the right of shot that would be a very deep subject to try and focus with just swing.

I think the fence and the factory in this shot being roughly parallel plays a trick and makes you reach for swing. But what I see is a planar surface (the ground) extending from your feet off to infinity, i.e. classic tilt territory. The fence sticks up from the ground a small amount, and the factory sticks up a lot. This handily corresponds to the kind of depth of field you get with tilt anyway, i.e. a relative narrow wedge close to you, extending to a wide wedge focus at infinity. The exactl plane of focus probably wants to be placed some distanve above the ground level to accomodate for this top-to-bottom depth of the fence and factory. I don't know what lens this is shot with (150mm normal lens?) but at f/32 with some tilt I don't think focus would be a problem.

[ki6mf]

The problem you run into with either front or rear tilt is that vertical objects go out of focus. Normal focus = | | -|| Tilt Focus = | \ -\| anything in the foreground can stick up through the plain of focus and you loose focus. The solution is to make several fine tuning adjustments use a focus loupe and traditionally Polaroid instant test shots. Its best to keep tall foreground objects to a minimum or dont tilt and use a depth of field table and focus along with a tape measure to get accurate measurement of foreground distance objects

[Brian Ellis]

The problem you run into with either front or rear tilt is that vertical objects go out of focus. Normal focus = | | -|| Tilt Focus = | \ -\| anything in the foreground can stick up through the plain of focus and you loose focus. The solution is to make several fine tuning adjustments use a focus loupe and traditionally Polaroid instant test shots. Its best to keep tall foreground objects to a minimum or dont tilt and use a depth of field table and focus along with a tape measure to get accurate measurement of foreground distance objects

Just to clarify - front or rear tilt don't necessarily cause vertical objects to go "out of focus." If all or a portion of the vertical object extends above or below the plane of focus obtained with the tilt then yes, the portion of the object that's outside the plane of focus will be out of focus and to make it appear sharp you'll need to stop down. But as long as the object is within the plane of focus achieved with tilt then there's no need to do anything else with respect to that object.

[Thom Bennett]

I think front swing and a bit of front tilt are just the ticket for this setup and here's why: the primary plane of the subject (factory, brick fence) are moving away from the camera position. The fact that they are far away from each other simply puts depth of field into more important play. My recommendation would be to swing the front standard to get the factory in focus across its entire plane and then utilize depth of field and hyperfocal distance to pull the near part of the brick fence into focus. At this point you still may need a bit of front tilt to bring the lower part of the brick fence into focus while keeping the top of the factory smokestacks in as well. A very delicate and challenging maneuver.

[JWaldinger]

Thanks Thom!
I have gotten a lot of feedback on this forum and on LL, and it seems that some front swing with slight front tilt is the most consistent answer to tackle this composition as you have suggested. I'm really glad I brought this issue to the forum and hopefully in the future more newbies like myself will post some of their own compositional VC challenges so that more experienced Jedi Masters can guide them :D

regards,

-justin