What is the most movement youve ever used?

[Darin Cozine]

Weve all seen the advertisements of large format cameras looking like a pretzel. The reality is that it does not take much movement for most shots. But I would like to hear about the times when you used the most amount of movement you can remember.

Please describe the situation and the results as best possible.

[Brian Vuillemenot]

I've moved my camera all over the place- up mountains, through deserts, into swamps... As far as movements on the camera, I usually just use a little front tilt and sometimes some rise or shift.

[David A. Goldfarb]

The most movement I tend to use is with a tall structure in a cramped place (a not so unusual problem in New York), where I might be using maximum front rise along with some indirect front rise by tilting the camera up and tilting the front and rear standards forward in parallel. Of course architectural photographers who are more serious than I am might rent scaffolding, arrange access in an adjacent building, or even hire a helicopter in such a situation.

[Steve Hamley]

Darin,

I do mostly fieldwork, and not a lot of movement is usually necessary - except when doing really close work with the camera pointing down or at some odd angle to a close up subject. I've run out of back movement on my field camera and had to use front movement too under these conditions. But this is rare.

Thanks!

Steve

[darter]

I use a little rear tilt occasionally, though it makes me a little dizzy. I probably should check with the Perpendiucularity Consultant about this.

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

With the 8x10, at most 1 inch rise and less than 5º front tilt, rarely do I use the back tilt but is nice to have.

With the 12x20 I tend to use more rise and tilt since the DOF is shallower. Other than that, rarely have used swings, and for those time I neede to use swings I did not have enough in either camera so stopping down was the only option.

[jnantz]

darin:

the most movement i used was when i was documenting the walls of a quarry outside of boston. i was 300 feet up, tethered in about 10 feet from the edge. camera tilted down to get the bottom of the quarry & the camera's back /front leveled off to straighten everything out. yes, i am kind of freaked out by heights - still :)

- john

[Frank Petronio]

The classic portfolio/student product shot of a couple of staggered wine bottle often requires extreme movements, compared to most landscape or portrait situations. You're usually shooting down at the subject, requiring a large amount of front drop/rear rise; a swing the keep the two bottles in focus; and maybe some tilt depending on the foreground.

Tilting the camera down plus swing = yaw, the elimination of which Sinar managed to turn into a marketing advantage.

Shots like these used the full image circle of 210, 240, 300 Symmars - and were done by the thousands, everyday, for years.

[Ernest Purdum]

I used to do product work and more often than not shot from well above the subject with a long lens, 300mm on 4" X 5", the object being to show two sides and the top of the product. Not having any back rise, the rail would be pointed well down and lots of tilt at both ends would be used to keep the verticals straight.

[David Flockhart]

Slipping on wet smooth ice and contorting like a pretzel to stay upright.

[Bruce Watson]

I've actually used all my camera could do on exactly two occasions. Both were basically architecture. Both were in Japan. Both were because I didn't have enough room to work in, and wanted to get the shot anyway (some of those shrines are just tiny!)

I used a 110 SS-XL, all the rise and shift I could (front one way, rear the other), then leveled and plumbed the back, and used front tilt and swing to bring the subject into focus. Camera looked like a pretzel.

One of those shots came out looking pretty good. The other died, but mostly because it was a dismal rainy day and the subject garden just didn't have any life to it (but, it was the one chance I had, so I tried it knowing that). That one also had a problem with bellows induced vignetting because of the extreme movements.

As to all the other work I've done... Mostly I keep the back plumb and level, and do a little rise/fall with a little front tilt. I really do try to keep it as simple as possible.

[David R Munson]

Depends on the circumstances. In most cases outside, I use only limited movements. Most cases in the studio I use a little more and occasionally a bunch. Once in a while, though, I'll work on something where I want extremely selective focus and use a whole mess of movements, usually in the "wrong" direction in order to get the plane of focus where I want it. Here (http://www.davidrmunson.com/ref/12dis.jpg) is an example of what I'm talking about. The camera was looking pretty twisted most of the time when doing this image series.

[Ole Tjugen]

Most movements?

A lot. All I have, in fact. On a Technika 5x7" with 300mm lens. Even if I do mostly landscapes, the landscapes around here absolutely refuse to lie flat and require quite some "pretzelisation" at times. But most of the time I only use a little front rise. Or drop. And a little tilt, and a degree or so of swing...

[Gene M]

Chili and draft beer.

[jerry brodkey]

Once while photographing in the tomb of Menna in Egypt, the important picture that I needed to take was behind large panes of glass held in place by large posts cemented into the floor. The glass was removed but that left a sizeable post directly in front of the most important scene. However by shifting the lens far to the left and the film plane to the right, keeping both parallel to the wall, the required picture was taken and came out very well. I don't know if that's the most, but I remember it very well....

[Ryan M]

Hey Gene, Its 10:00pm here now and I just got back from consuming just that, well, more beer than chili - can't wait for tomorrow. Cheers

[Chris Partti]

I think it's probably this one:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=711234

In order to show the bridge, I had to be a certain distance from and an extreme angle to the window. It took some severe movements to correct the perspective of the window frame. Because my 8x10 didn't have enough shift and rise, I had to play with other movements, which threw off focus. My lens didn't have enough coverage, but since the corners were black anyway, the vignetting didn't show. I recall struggling for about 45 minutes with this set up. At least twice, I had got myself so screwed up I had to return everything to neutral and start over.

I made two platinum prints of this image, which showed real promise, before ruining the negative on an incompletely dried sheet. Later, I went back and took a picture from the same spot in about 2 minutes with a medium format camera. A couple of more minutes playing with the warp function in Picture Window Pro and I'd fixed up the perspective. That's the version linked above.

[Jean-Louis Llech]

Chris,
You'd better modify the legend of your photo.
The camera used to take it is supposed to be a Mamiya 6.

[Bob Salomon]

The most I have done was 3 point perspective on 45 of products at far less then 1:1.

The most I have seen done on a daily basis was at a studio in a paper plate and cup company. They had to photograph jumbo soft drink cups for McDonalds at 1:1 in true 3 point perspective showing the cup without distortion from the front top and side while being high enough above to show the contents and the ice. Shot with 360 and 480 Sironar N lenses

Done on an 810 GTL with 7 foot custom telescoping rail with a custom 810 to 57 reducing bellows attached to a custom 57 intermediate standard and then to a 57 to 45 bellows.

Required both the largest Linhof studio stand plus a Linhof Heavy Duty Pro tripod just to support the camera at extension.

The needs and the use of movements vary greatly depending on your interest.

Ask a studio product photographer and extreme movements may be everyday. A photographer shooting fine art for the Smithsonian may use no movements or just some direct displacement. Then add landscape, industrial, portrait, etc and the use is between these extremes.

The question you really want to ask is how much movement is needed for what you want to do?

[Chris Partti]

"Chris,
You'd better modify the legend of your photo.
The camera used to take it is supposed to be a Mamiya 6."

Jean-Louis,

The linked version was taken on a Mamiya 6. See the last paragraph of my post.

[Todd West]

Unlike most posters, I regularly hit the limits of coverage on all my lenses
(image circles of 216 to 336mm) and have been known to use a 6x7 reducing back to get more movement than is available with 4x5. For image circles around 220mm that usually means minor amounts of tilt and swing, plus as much rise or fall as the lens can handle. The larger circles support enough rise and fall that tilt or swing usually becomes the limiting factor.



The most movement I've ever used was around 50 degrees of tilt with three inches of rise and about 20 degrees of swing. That was on a near 1:1 macro and I needed the reducing back since the roughly 550mm image circle didn't cover 4x5 with that much movement.



I've not found there to be too much of an issue with large movements, other than the need to compensate for off axis light falloff on the lens as well as light loss due to bellows extension. The former is a controversial subject; see the thread on this at photo.net; http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=005mUV.

[Richard Urmonas]

I have run out of adjustement on my Linhof Techinka 4x5 on two occasions. One was photographing a building which was on a steep sided hill. The camera position was below building ground level. The other time was photographing a series of cascades from the top and trying ot keep everything from top to bottom in focus including both river banks.

[Paul Metcalf]

Full tilts (front and back) once with Wisner 4x5 Tech Field and a Nikor 450mm.. Had a field of tulips in foreground and a tall barn in the background (a few hundred yards away but still at infinity focus). I wanted to fill the frame with a near tulip and have the barn as a slightly larger than full-frame backdrop. I shot some frames with the background purposely out-of-focus but the frame with near and far in-focus is the most striking. Without tilts, I needed at least f/128 (dv was well over 10mm) which was a bit into diffraction limit, as well as too long of exposure. With tilts, I got it down to f/64 (dv around 10mm) and fast enough to keep wind movement out of picture. Most other times only require a bit of front tilt. I shift (up/down) on most shots.

[jantman]

I currently have no tripod head for LF. I use all the movement I can.

Once or twice I remember using up most of the movement on my 810N, but that was probably either because my tripod lacked a head, or one of those damn (rivers/mountains/cliffs/etc) was in the way.

[Scott Walton]

In the studio, I use front and especially rear tilts and swings but generally shooting outside for my own personal stuff, I don't need them most of the time (unless there is a building or flag pole ect.). When shooting products for work, I need to make sure the products look realistic and true, naturally. Boxes and other things need to look like a square or rectangle without converging lines and back tilts and shifts are needed

[Sandy Sorlien]

Now, tell me if this is the stupidest question you've ever heard, but why do we need swing? Why is it even on the camera? I regularly shoot long streetscapes with diminishing perspective. When I first started doing this, I used swing to lessen the size difference between the near buildings and far ones. Then I realized it was easier to just rotate the tripod head to align the film plane closer to the subject plane, and use shift to bring the subject back into the frame. Doesn't that do exactly the same thing?

(My answer to your question is: For streetscapes and building "portraits," I use up to 10 degrees of rise and/or shift, with a tiny bit of tilt to keep the building tops from looming; that's about it.)

Cheers, Sandy

[Frank Petronio]

Sandy, you use swing the same way that you might tilt the front standard to hold focus from foreground to background in a landscape. Only sideways. So by swinging slightly towards your street front, the nearest door and the furthest door could both be in focus even with a large aperture. Shifting as you do works fine, just consider trying abit of front swing to hold focus.

[Lars Åke Vinberg]

This fall I photographed in an aspen meadow using my 8x10 and 150XL. The closest aspens were very close to the camera, so I had to use full rise, about 4" rise, to keep the trees parallel and inside the frame.

Every now and then I make more extreme near-far compositions, using 47XL on 6x9cm or 4x5", requiring more aggressive rear tilt or front tilt with front fall. Sometimes 20 degrees of front tilt has not been enough.

But the above are extreme cases, normally for landscape a few degrees of tilt/swing and a little shift/rise/fall is all that is required.