Here is a scan of an 11x14 I recently printed. I specifically modified the back of the Century to tilt far enough back to do a shot like this. This print was just scanned on an office scanner (I don't do digital photography!) but in the original print the detail in the close rocks and distant areas looks almost unreal.
Front tilt / rear tilt - I think it's a matter of what effect you want to achieve and what you are trying to say in your image. There are no rules. A completely different approach would be to use a split magnifier of a few diopter strength. This will allow you to capture foreground and distance with little distortion. You'll need to shoot at relatively large apertures to avoid imaging the edge of the glass and be careful in the placement of the edge in the image.
Nate Potter, Austin TX.
A big advantage of using rear tilt is that it does not eat into the image circle of the lens - useful if your lens only just covers the format
Generally you won't be using enormous tilt for landscape, so the distortion from tilting the back will generally be negligible, so I might not sweat it.
With architecture or other identifiable verticals in a picture, or with a very wide lens, or extreme tilts, front tilt may be better.
C
More years ago than I want to mention I learned on a 2D. This was before any monorail was on the market that I know of. When going into the field the camera was mounted on the tripod and tilted down a few degrees. The back was then tilted to vertical. Upon arriving at the imag sire a quick check indicated if more tilts were needed either of the tripod head or the back. Once this adjustment was made it remained the same for the day.
Occasionally I still use a camera w/o front tilts and when doing so I use the same method.
All the above is good advice. One thing to remember is if you want sharp focus on all objects in the composition make sure your have no tall vertical obects in the foreground. You need a lot of open space in the foreground to keep the tops of the tall objects in focus. Last Image I experimented with was a tall oak tree next to a tavern in Lexington, MA. Shot from 50 feet away the top of the 80 foot oak tree was out of the focus while everything was fine! Think big meadow or other open space if everything is to be in sharp focus.
Forgive my ignorance on this, but does front tilt/rise really give less distortion/keystoning than rear tilt alone? I understand that rear tilt changes the difference in distance from the lens, but using the front rise/fall also puts the lens closer to either the top or bottom edge of the film...
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
As Brian indicated, you can easily achieve exactly the same effect as front tilt with a 2D.
Point the camera down a little to achieve the degree of front tilt that you need, and then compensate with rear tilt by returning the ground glass back to vertical. Presto, front tilt!
You may also need to add a little rise with this method.
Yep, I know one can duplicate the exact same lens film positions using rear tilt and front rise/fall as with just using front tilt. But does front tilt (with or without rise and fall) give the same keystone "distortion" as rear tilt? Ive seen it stated that it does, but in my mind, I'm not so sure...
"I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."
From another 2D user fwiw. I simply tilt the back until the geometry is right, bring the angle at the tripod head down until the back is level if that is important, raise the front for proper framing at the new angle, and make final focus adjustment. Sure that's about 3 extra things to do over the Deardorff but hardly worth 20 entries. It has seemed second nature to me since the first time I did that. Where you will run into trouble with these antiques is situations like I had in Bodie recently. Trying to get window reflection of the gas pumps at the necessary distance and angle the single swing at the back was simply not enough. With the Deardorff I could have swung both front and rear and got the shot easily. And so it goes. My V6 won't make the tires smoke either but we work 99.8% of the time with no problems in the confines of the machine at hand.
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