What ever happened to rear swings AND tilts on field view cameras?

[Mark Sawyer]

Many don't seem to understand that the "distortion" caused by swings or tilts of either front or back are identical. This is the misinformation I was referring to...

When you swing or tilt the front, you take the lens off-axis, but it stays in the same place relative to the film, so no distortion.

If you swing or tilt the back, you move one edge of the film farther from the lens, making the image bigger, and the other edge of the film closer to the lens, making the image smaller. You're effectively using different focal lengths across the image area. This distortion is called "keystoning".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_effect

[ic-racer]

If front swings and tilts are altering the proportions or size relationships in the scene, your camera is not constructed very well and it is not tilting and swinging on the lens axis. Seems like you have adapted to it so maybe it is a feature rather than a flaw.

[Alan Townsend]

Mark,

The distance from the lens to the film is the focal length at the image center at infinity. Off axis, the distance from the lens to the image at infinity is greater. When the lens is tilted by itself it needs to be refocused to adjust for this change in distance. After that, when the best compromise focus is found, the image plane will be farther from the lens and and behind the film on one side, and closer to the lens and in front of the film on the other, exactly like with a rear swing. They are geometrically identical. The same key stoning will be present.

Thanks for the response. What you are saying is what most people are learning today. What I am trying to say is more easily shown in a drawing than explained by text.

[Vaughn]

Vaughn, beautiful camera... Eastman #2 ?

Yes -- sweet little machine. Front tilt would be nice, but one would give up the sturdiness of the front standard.

The design works nicely with hiking with the camera on a tripod. The sliding block adds weight, but when used to straddle the bed hinge, really tightens the whole camera up.

No matter how one wants to look at it, what's on the GG is what one gets!

[rfesk]

I have Steve Simmons book. And will study the photos again.

A little off topic: What I miss on my latest field view camera is front (or rear) shift. Rarely but still sometimes needed when photographing buildings.
Mounting it on its side will give shift but I lose rise.

[Corran]

One time, I mounted a Century Graphic 2x3 camera on the tripod using the side tripod mounting point, and then also tilted the tripod head 90 degrees so that the camera was upside-down. This was required to use front tilt without dropping the bed, and, I used the front "rise" to get fall since it was upside down, accentuating the foreground, same as rear tilt would do when used in conjunction with the camera aimed down slightly. This was a really difficult image to put together and would've been way easier to do with a proper 4x5 camera with the typical movements but I was travelling and did not have the ability to take such a large camera/system.

[reddesert]

It's not just Simmons who says that the position of the back determines perspective. Writers of books on the view camera such as Strobel and others have been saying this long before 2015. If one is (for example) interested in taking pictures of building exteriors or interiors with parallel rather than converging verticals, the back of the camera needs to be vertical, parallel to the vertical lines of the building. Now, there are plenty of great aesthetic reasons not to worry about this. The back doesn't always need to be vertical to make a good photograph, depending on the subject.

For a rectilinear lens, the lens position itself does not change the perspective relations of the photograph. One way to understand this is to imagine replacing the lens with a pinhole. If you use on-axis tilts and swings to pivot the pinhole, it doesn't change the sizes or positions of objects in the image. Next imagine replacing the pinhole with a lens stopped down to f/128 - practically the same thing as a pinhole. Now imagine opening the lens up to f/16. As we know, merely opening the aperture doesn't change the sizes or positions of objects in the image either. Tilting and swinging the lens does affect the location of sharp focus. If one is not concerned with converging verticals etc, it can be possible to effect a similar change in focus location with back movements.

I think some cameras lack full rear movements because it's somewhat easier to make a field camera that folds up if the rear movements are limited, and not on-axis.

[Ben Calwell]

My Wista DX (stolen in April — long story) had full movements on the rear, i.e., swings, tilts and shift. It was a great camera. I miss it.

[Ben Calwell]

A few years ago, I shot a table top still life with my 5x7 Linhof Tech III. Not having front forward tilt on the camera, I had to tilt the back slightly toward the rear to get sharp focus across the setup, which included a round, metal colander. I developed the film and right away noticed that the round edge of the colander, toward the bottom of the frame, didn’t look round anymore. It looked sort of bent and pushed in. I was able to crop in a bit on the print so that it wasn’t as noticeable.

[Axelwik]

View cameras haven't changed much in the last 25 years. Get what you want - there are a lot of older cameras that are available used, and newer ones too. Sounds like the OP wants some kind of justification to build one - have at it.