question regarding movements

[richard rackham]

Hi - I'm very new to large format (but have been a professional 35mm and digital photographer for 22 years) and have an ageing Sinar F with 150mm f5.6 Schneider lens. I bought into (very cheaply) 5x4 because I wanted to make the most of the large DoF possiblities. Having attempted this today, I'm a little confused, as when I tilt the front down to try and get in focus, say - a rock in the foreground - everything else goes way out of focus - in front of and more so in the background. Is this actually how the image will be recorded or is it just the way the scene is appearing on the focus screen and in reality will have much more of the subject plane in focus. If that is the case, how do you accurately judge how far to tilt and where to make your main point of focus? Any help much appreciated. Cheers Richard

PS: I was viewing the image with the aperture wide open, but taking the shot stopped down to f32 most of the time.

[Bruce Watson]

...I'm a little confused, as when I tilt the front down to try and get in focus, say - a rock in the foreground - everything else goes way out of focus - in front of and more so in the background. Is this actually how the image will be recorded or is it just the way the scene is appearing on the focus screen and in reality will have much more of the subject plane in focus. If that is the case, how do you accurately judge how far to tilt and where to make your main point of focus? Any help much appreciated. Cheers Richard

The ground glass doesn't lie. It tells the exact and unvarnished truth. What you see is exactly what you get. This is one of the joys of LF!

There are some good techniques out there. There are some books that explain movements -- search this forum for discussions of the books. This website has some good articles available for free. Like this one on focusing. That's where I'd start.

Once you play around with it some you'll begin to see that DOF actually decreases with increased film format size, because of the concurrent increase in lens focal lengths. DOF is a function of focal length after all. What gives LF the appearance of increased DOF is the ability to manipulate the plane of exact focus -- something you can't do as easily with smaller format cameras.

So mastering movements is fairly important. And the best way to do that is to read and study, but then put the books down and go out and photograph. I'll take any excuse to get out there and make some photographs!

[climbabout]

Richard
Keep in mind that if you are tilting the front standard forward to gain near to far depth of field, you can only do this if you don't have a tall object in the near foreground. Front tilt will only work in 1 plane - the rest you need fstops to increase dof.

Lets assume the scene you talk about has no tall object in the near forground or middle distances. In your mind draw an imaginary line from the top of the rock in the foreground to the top of the tallest distant object.
With the front standard upright, focus about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way into the scene. Then while looking through the ground glass begin to tilt the front standard forward until near and far is in better focus. You may have to refocus and adjust the tilt a couple of times until near and far is as sharp as you can get it. Then stop down to get the rest in focus - this you can see on the ground glass. Most times you only need a few degrees of tilt - this of course depends on the focal length of the lens and the focusing distance. You can achive a similar result tilting the back toward you as well - although that will change the perspective slightly.
I use an old field camera, so that is my technique. I know there are sophisticated Sinar models that have controls that make this easier - but this is how most of us do it.
Tim

[Gordon Moat]

Just a simple aspect to add to this. When you have base tilt on a view camera, using tilt moves the lens forward or backwards when you tilt. So let's imagine you focused on that rock, then tilted using base tilt forward; the result is that your lens moved forward, and the image is now out of focus. So the next step would be moving the front standard, and the lens, backwards a bit, which should bring the image back in focus.

One thing I do when I plan on using bas tilt is to set-up the front standard slightly aft of the infinity stop. This gives me some room to move and not need to unclamp the front standard, which allows a usable focus range for any near or far objects.

As noted above, the ground glass tells you fairly well what you will get on the film. You can practice with the camera and ground glass without exposing film, and probably learn more than simply by reading books.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat Photography

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

Welcome back to the world of bellows cameras, Richard !
The required angles for front tilt in landscape are in fact much smaller than those required for photographing objects in the studio following the techniques described in the good old textbooks of the last century.

For example with the 150mm lens outdoors, if the lens is located at 1.5 metre above ground, the tilt angle required to bring the plane of sharp focus horizontal to the ground level is only 6 degrees.
And if you have a tall object in the field you should probably compromise and place the plane of sharpness somewhere in between ground level and some vertical plane where the tall objet is located ; for this you'll need only one half of the previous angle i.e. 3 degrees !
So tilting, yes, but just a bit for landscape use ;-)

[Nathan Potter]

Whether you use swing or tilt on the front or rear standard the principle is the same. If we use rear swing as an example imagine the following.

There will be an angle of swing such that a single plane in X and Y extending out from below the base of the camera will be in perfect focus from near to infinity with the lens wide open. The perfect focus will only be true for objects resting in that single plane. Any other objects that project out of that plane in the Z direction (vertical direction) will fall out of focus. In order to bring these Z axis objects into focus it is necessary to stop down the lens. The same is true when using tilt. As described above there are perspective considerations that add suttle effects as a function of rear vs front swing and tilt and whether such movements are on the optical axis or from the base of the camera.

Nate Potter, Austin TX.

[Mark Sloane]

Hi - I'm very new to large format (but have been a professional 35mm and digital photographer for 22 years) and have an ageing Sinar F with 150mm f5.6 Schneider lens. I bought into (very cheaply) 5x4 because I wanted to make the most of the large DoF possiblities. Having attempted this today, I'm a little confused, as when I tilt the front down to try and get in focus, say - a rock in the foreground - everything else goes way out of focus - in front of and more so in the background. Is this actually how the image will be recorded or is it just the way the scene is appearing on the focus screen and in reality will have much more of the subject plane in focus. If that is the case, how do you accurately judge how far to tilt and where to make your main point of focus? Any help much appreciated. Cheers Richard

PS: I was viewing the image with the aperture wide open, but taking the shot stopped down to f32 most of the time.

Richard,

There is a ton of info out there to help. I too am a recent convert and one source I found very helpful was ytube.

I really struggled w/tilt and swing until I watched the video listed below. It's called: "Scheimpflug / Plane of focus" The instructor uses a cereal box for the demonstration so I watched the video and then set up the same scenario.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR4m70xr9mE

In addition, while on ytube, search for large format photography and you will be amazed at some of the video available.

[erie patsellis]

Richard, if you hunt down the manual for the F, there's a tilt calculator built in, takes all the guess work out (in theory, I always needed to tweak a hair).

erie

[richard rackham]

Many, many thanks for your responses, I think this is a brilliant forum. If you think there is anything an ex-press photographer (one who used to regularly uprate Ilford HP5 to 3200 to photograph floodlit football etc) can help with, please get in touch! Sincere thanks for your input, cheers Richard

[Capocheny]

Hi Richard,

Try going through the Sinar.ch website:

http://www.sinar.ch/site/index__gast...0-52-1955.html

Lots of good info here.

Cheers