Greetings! I'm working my way toward getting into large format photography, and in the process of researching options for my first camera I've come across a question I haven't been able to find clear info on yet.
My goal is to get myself a 4x5 field camera setup for landscape and architectural photography, and I'm still stuck between deciding to buy an existing old camera to refurbish and to build a new custom one from scratch. One of the biggest factors that I'm unsure of is what I should really be looking for with regards to movement styles, and the impact of which movements are nested where. This is a little more important on the line of deciding to build my own as I then have full control over how things are done rather than simply accepting and adapting to whatever the setup is for a camera I buy.
For example, you could have your shifts on the exterior with the tilts nested inside them. Tilting the film plane in that case would set it to whatever angle, but you still move that now tilted plane up and down in the original vertical plane if you apply shifts.
Nesting shifts inside the tilts then mean that once tilted the shifts move the film along the new tilted plane, which in turn makes a very different movement pattern. Plus tilts being done from an edge vs tilt axis running through the centre of the plane seems to be another design choice that is going to slightly change how your workflow goes.
I'm seeing a mixed bag of options while looking at different designs and watching videos of photographers employing various models of cameras, but I haven't come across any decent discussions on the order and such of how photographers prefer to have the camera setup for different movements. Lots of information on Tilts X + Shifts Y to get Effect Z, but far less conversation about arriving at a given tilt and shift while keeping your framing as you're imagining things.
Do people feel that the mechanical order, whether tilting affects the plane of your shifts or not, really impacts how they work? And is this something that I really should be providing sketches with? (This really feels like a coffee and whiteboard kind of issue.)
I've seen one field camera where the rear standard could be moved left and right as the outermost movement, then the tilts, and finally the 'vertical' shift would always be along the plane set by the two shifts. Mechanically this seems to produce a full movement range while being mechanically robust, but having the shifts on either side of the tilt mechanics also means that the vectors for shifting converge slightly if both shifts are applied.
My background is in computer sciences, so it won't surprise me if I'm thinking too much about that issue.
And I'm also not seeing much in the way of hard details on ranges involved. Obviously the more range the better for oddball edge cases, but the more demand gets placed on your lens's image circle and the camera's bellows. What do you feel is a minimum distance and angle for a given movement, and at what range do you feel you are unlikely to ever really worry about needing?
Thanks for the input, and sorry if this is better suited for a different section of the forums.
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Originally Posted by Alan Gales
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