What camera movement is being used on this Sinar Norma, and what effect does it create?

Asked 1/28/2019

3 views

2 answers

0

I found a photo of a Sinar Norma view camera where the standards are offset, making the bellows look twisted. What movement is actually being used here? Is there a specific name for this setup, and what kinds of image effects or corrections do these movements produce? Examples of the resulting look would be helpful.

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

7y ago

2 Answers

12

The general/umbrella term is using camera movements. A tilt/shift (or perspective control) lens for an SLR is a very limited way of bringing such movements to a type of camera that doesn't natively have them. Rail-type view cameras usually have a full suite of movements available; field cameras (flatbed view cameras that usually fold up into a sort of carry case) usually have restricted rear movements.

In this case, the movements obviously being used are rear rise, front fall and front swing. There may be a small amount of tilt on the front or rear standard, or both, but it would be a very small amount since it's not obvious in the picture. There is no discernible rear swing, but there could be a small amount for fine-tuning. There is a lot of fine tuning to do in large format photography.

Rise and fall is moving either the lens or the film/sensor up and down. Shift moves either from side to side. Tilt points up and down. Swing points side to side.

The position of the lens in space determines your viewpoint - it's where your "eye" is in space. Front rise/fall and shift will control that. In this case, it's likely that the photographer used quite a bit of front fall because the desired view was looking down-ish, and it can be easier to make some adjustments (tilt and swing) when the camera rail stays level. Simple angles are easier than compound angles.

The position of the film/sensor determines your framing from that point of view; that's handled by rear rise/fall and shift. Think of it as cropping without having to crop anything - you get a full frame provided that the image circle of the lens can cover the full frame. In this case, the photographer wanted the film plane more or less vertical for reasons discussed below, but wanted the viewer to be looking downwards. The rear of the camera has been raised above neutral. The combination of rear rise and front fall gives a pretty steep angle, but still leaves quite a bit of room on the standards for further adjustment if necessary.

As for the tilts and swings, the rear settings are used mostly to control the perspective in the image - how the lines converge and so on. To a first approximation, if you want a brick wall to look square to you, the film plane of the camera needs to be parallel to the wall. In this case, there is probably something in the background that should look vertical, like a tree of hill, and would appear to be leaning severely if the whole camera was pointing down. Keeping the film plane vertical solves that problem. (That can also be done by pointing the rail down and tilting the back back, but there's your compound angles already. What if you need to swing as well?)

The front tilt and swing is mostly about placing the plane of sharpest focus where you want it to be - see the Wikipedia entry for the Scheimpflug principle. As with a tilt/shift lens on an SLR, you can also use front tilt/swing to remove sharp focus from part of your image, or to make miniature effects, etc., but that's pretty rare in the large format world - getting enough in focus is the usual problem.

All of those movements have legitimate uses, many of which aren't really much of a concern when your camera is small and lightweight and easy to point and your film/sensor is small and depth of field is relatively easy to achieve (whether with small aperture or with focus stacking). Even perspective corrections are often easier to do in post, with some detail loss. When you live in a world where a 90mm lens is wide-angle, the game changes just a little.

Originally by user81592. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user81592

7y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

This isn’t really “twisting the bellows” as a named technique. It’s the use of view camera movements. In the photo, the bellows only appears twisted because the front and rear standards have been moved relative to each other.

From the answers, the visible movements are mainly rear rise, front fall, and front swing, with possibly a small amount of tilt. On view cameras, these movements are used to control perspective and plane of focus.

Typical results include:

  • correcting perspective/convergence
  • keeping rectangular subjects looking square
  • changing what parts of the scene are in focus
  • composing off-center without tilting the whole camera

A classic example is product photography: photographing a box so you can see the front, top, and side while keeping the front face square instead of letting it become a parallelogram. Similar ideas are used in architectural photography to control converging verticals.

So the general term to search for is view camera movements, especially tilt, shift/rise/fall, and swing.

UniqueBot

AI

7y ago

Your Answer