What to do when you run out of rise?

[Havoc]

Last weekend I visited Amiens and stood before the cathedral with my Wista and a SWD90. Now as cathedrals go this one has a fairly normal width but is is on the low side (about 50 meters). Problem is it only is a small square before it. So I rather swiftly ran out of rise on the Wista.

Now a monorail might have given me a bit more rise but likely I would run into the limitations of the lens.

In the end I just tilted the camera. I didn't try the 75mm because that might help a bit but then again the image circle would have been smaller so the end it might ended worse.

What would have been a better solution?

[Vaughn]

Climb on top of a truck or bus?

[Keith Pitman]

Tilt the camera up, bring the front and rear standards to vertical and parallel to each other and you have created more rise. You have to watch it or you can easily run out of lens coverage.

[John Kasaian]

Tilt the camera up, bring the front and rear standards to vertical and parallel to each other and you have created more rise. You have to watch it or you can easily run out of lens coverage.

Yep.

[Jim Jones]

Havoc -- there are two options. one is to use the 75mm lens if it covers the 4.5 format, keeping the back vertical and cropping the undesired foreground. The other is to tilt the camera with the 90mm and correct for converging verticals in post processing. My ancient 4x5 deJur enlarger permits doing this in the darkroom, although a digital scan of the negative may be more convenient.

[Heroique]

In the end I just tilted the camera.

If you tilt the camera, remember the plane of focus moves.

Ideally, front and back movements (after the tilting the camera) would help the plane of focus land once again on the cathedral's façade, and if not perfectly, a narrower aperture can help expand DOF.

So "getting the top in" and correcting geometric distortion may help one achieve the desired image – but can also cause one to forget where the perfect plane of focus has moved to, where it needs to be, and how to get it there. Post processing may correct for distortion, but it can't move the plane of focus to a better place.

[Havoc]

Climb on top of a truck or bus?

Don't think that that little bit of height would have mattered. Besides, getting a truck or bus in the pedestrian zone while the city was full of order troops for a manifestation of the "gillets jaunes" might not have been a smart move Still don't understand why I wasn't tackled with all the stuff inside the cathedral.

Tilt the camera up, bring the front and rear standards to vertical and parallel to each other and you have created more rise. You have to watch it or you can easily run out of lens coverage.

Maybe, but I think that the standard bellows wouldn't have permitted it. And as you say, the lens might not cover enough.

Havoc -- there are two options. one is to use the 75mm lens if it covers the 4.5 format, keeping the back vertical and cropping the undesired foreground. The other is to tilt the camera with the 90mm and correct for converging verticals in post processing. My ancient 4x5 deJur enlarger permits doing this in the darkroom, although a digital scan of the negative may be more convenient.

Don't have an enlarger permitting 4x5, but yes, in digital I could correct. Hadn't tought about that yet.

[Heroique]

Climb on top of a truck or bus?

If there's no truck or bus nearby, one might also climb the stairs of a building across the street, and ask permission to set-up in a room with a large window facing your subject. Not sure if this could be done for Amiens cathedral, but I've done this for a gigantic and shapely redwood tree! (In other cases, I've been denied use of a building, but granted permission to set-up on the front steps.)

[Bob Salomon]

Don't think that that little bit of height would have mattered. Besides, getting a truck or bus in the pedestrian zone while the city was full of order troops for a manifestation of the "gillets jaunes" might not have been a smart move Still don't understand why I wasn't tackled with all the stuff inside the cathedral.



Maybe, but I think that the standard bellows wouldn't have permitted it. And as you say, the lens might not cover enough.



Don't have an enlarger permitting 4x5, but yes, in digital I could correct. Hadn't tought about that yet.

You might want to read this about perspective corrections by computer:

http://www.rodenstock-photo.com/Arch...%20Control.pdf

[Havoc]

Thanks for that Bob. Food for thought.