The Art of Looming

I've used rear tilt for this effect for years, but IMO it needs be used judiciously because it starts to look fake at a certain point.
 
I'm not at all convinced by the DSLR example. Changing lens, changing viewpoint and changing height isn't really the same thing.
If you look at the Ebony* example, you'll see that he's been to a great deal of trouble to duplicate the effect of simply pointing the whole camera downward and then tilting the back backwards. The position of the standards is irrelevant; it's the relative positions of the lens and film planes that make the difference.
Perhaps I should add that in a tricky situation, it's quite easy to end up with this sort of thing after making many small adjustments.

*It is a very handsome beast, I must admit.
 
Last edited:
Changing lens, changing viewpoint and changing height isn't really the same thing.

Thank you! It's not the same thing! Period!!

The only way I know to achieve this effect is with a camera having adjustable standards, whereby the camera is pointed down and the back (film plane) is tilted rearward. Of course, I only have nearly 40 years of view camera experience...could be wrong! ;)
 
Yes, the DSLR shot looks like a page from a beginners' text book: "Wide angle lenses make closer objects look bigger." He says 10° tilt, which might have tilted the plane of focus forward. The advice used to be to stop down a bit more, but nowadays, it would be to use focus stacking. (I'm not sure if DSLR users are as obsessed by diffraction limits as some LF users.)
As this was an article about movements, it would have been helpful to show the 20mm shot both with and without the tilt. The shot we have looks as though night was creeping in, so that might not have been possible. Perhaps we are being too demanding.
We should give credit to the digital camera. Stacking is something that it can do relatively easily, that would be very tricky with film. It's a genuinely new resource.

Forty years? You'll be starting to feel that you're nearly out of the beginner's phase, eh? Something that I'm looking forward to.
 
Forty years? You'll be starting to feel that you're nearly out of the beginner's phase, eh? Something that I'm looking forward to.

:) Yeah, well, I seem to always be learning something! For example, I used the same film, developer, printing paper, etc, for the first 25 years or so, then my materials start disappearing and/or changing and now I've got to become comfortable with a whole set of new materials. Heck, I didn't even start printing on VC papers until the early 2000's! ;)
 
There always seems to be something more to learn.
 
There was a Japanese photographer who took this to extremes, he's had 35mm equipment modified, he'd have largish insects in the foreground and an interesting background. It was a bit more than just using a perspective control lens, I may or rather should still have the pages I kept from a magazine I'd guess late 1970's or 80's.

It's a technique many of use use to some extent or other and it doesn't always need tilts as long as you use a wide angle lens and stop down to get maximum DOF. Of course it's even easier for us LF shooters :D

Ian
 
Back
Top