First time ever!

[NedL]

Thanks Lenny and Thomas.

[Tin Can]

It's great to learn all this stuff... I would add a couple of points. The first is that there is always a trade-off with tilts and swings. As you have already noticed, if you focus on the ground, the things that are higher up will be out of focus. Sometimes you win and sometimes it makes it worse...

I have found that you can stop down to at least f45 on most good LF lenses, with excellent quality. This is NOT a game of seeing how wide open you can be with the swings and tilts - it isn't necessary to do so. Many images are just fine without swings and/or tilts. I would say that most images shot with LF cameras over the past 200 years did not use movements.

Finally, instead of setting the focus in the middle, I would go for the first third, then stop down to get everything you want. I would suggest you do that, get your shot; and then try something with the movements for fun...

Really good advice. Historical fact. Should be a sticky...

[tgtaylor]

Actually it's very poor advise and should be disregarded by anyone seriously looking to improve their photography - especially large format photography. If camera movements are as superfluous as Lenny and Randy believe, then why invest money in a camera that is designed to deliver movements? The fact is that cameras with movements were always designed for those photographers who seek to maximize the potential of an image and not for the masses that come to photography simply because photography is cool and never progress past that initial infatuation. Cameras with movements are designed for those that go beyond the initial infatuation and become serious image makers. And that has been the case historically. Not long ago an article was published, in View Camera I think, that revisited and re-photographed William Henry Jackson's compositions to determine the camera movements Jackson employed.

Thomas

[Lenny Eiger]

Hilarious! In one moment advice is worthy of a sticky, the next it is poor and useless! The vagaries of time....

Of course, it is just advice, which is one man's opinion and it needs to be judged on whether or not it works for whoever decides to try it
.
My suggestion isn't that people do NOT learn these techniques, quite the contrary. I learned them a very long time ago and do them without thinking about it. Excellence in technique is always an admirable goal.

However, the mark of a great image isn't necessarily it's plane of focus. It's only one very small aspect of what one can do. Further, stopping down to a reasonable f stop takes care of many of the focus concerns. The last time I was in the field shooting I remember tilting the lens down just a bit and when I got it right it was a tiny amount of tilt.... we aren't talking about 20 degrees here, more like 1 or 2. Was it useful? Maybe. Other times it was quite useful, especially using the front shift to move things in and out of a frame. Is it a factor as important as learning to expose and develop just right for the shot? I think not. That's also subjective, of course.

I didn't get into LF for the swings and tilts. I got into LF because of the print quality. The delicious tonality of a large negative. The ability to expose and develop for one sheet of film was a huge bonus.