Tips for framing 21mm

don sorsa

pointer, shooter
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Hullo -

How do you frame shots with a 21mm lens to avoid tilts? Attached are three recent shots to show my difficulties. (The B&W was adjusted in Elements and isn't as bad as the other 2.) I use the cv21/4 and viewfinder. Thanks for suggestions.

Don
 
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I don't know exactly where to get one, nor have I ever used it, but I believe you can get a little level (same kind you use to hang stuff on your wall) that fits in your accessory shoe.
 
RFF sponsor Cameraquest offers a pretty nifty Voigtlander level that sits in a double-shoe adaptor right next to the external viewfinder, in such a way you can see the levels in peripheral vision while looking through the VF. Slick...
 
You can get a Voigtlander level and a two for one accesory shoe adaptor that lets you add the level and the viewfinder at the same time to the accessory shoe on the top of the camera. But....and this is a big but....using the level will only result in getting perfectly level shots straight on. If you need to tilt the camera up or down to get the view you want, then the level is of no use.

In the case of "restoring" the perpindicularity of the lines, if you scan your negatives, you can use the transform function in Photoshop....you select the image (drawing a selection rectangle around it), then under the file menu, select transform...perspective.
You then point your mouse arrow to one of the upper corners and either push in or pull the image out until the vertical lines are straight. You would then hit return, to make the changes stick, then recrop the image into a rectangle. I do this quite a lot, really myself. Sometimes you have to first deal with the horizontal lines of the image being parallel to the horizon line of the edge of the print. You would first rotate the image to achieve the horizontal levelness, then go through the transform, perspective routine to level out the vertical elements of the image.
Of course this results in a trapezoidal photo, which you then recrop down into a rectangle.
If you scan your image at the highest resolution available to you, which is usually 4000dpi, and at 16 bit, even after all this giggery-pokery, you will still wind up with an image that has enough quality to make big, big print. After all your manipulations, which would include density corrections and possibly dodging and burning, you then change the mode to 8 bit before you save to reduce the size of the final file at no loss of quality.
 
there is a bit of distortion to fight but if you have bright lines you can momentaraly tip your camera to line up the brightlines with something level and then raise the camera again to frame, mostly its practice and looking at the edges of the frame when you shoot.
 
phototone said:
In the case of "restoring" the perpindicularity of the lines, if you scan your negatives, you can use the transform function in Photoshop....you select the image (drawing a selection rectangle around it), then under the file menu, select transform...perspective.

So you can see how this type of correction works, I've done a quick transform on one of your photos and have attached it below. (I used iView Mediapro instead of Photoshop, but the principle is the same.)

Note that for an image shot with a lot of tilt, you will have to apply so much transform that you will have to crop quite a bit off the sides. Also note that objects toward the corners of the frame still may look a bit funny because while you can alter the skew of vertical or horizontal lines with the transform command, you can't alter the plane of perspective projection -- the lines may appear straight, but surface textures won't "roll off" the same way they would in a photo that was not tilted in the first place. Viewers usually don't notice this consciously, but they may feel that the photo looks "off" or "odd" for some reason...

Personally, I thought your original images were fine. Academic rectilinear perspective is only a convention, after all; nowadays, people are familiar enough with camera images that they know what an ultra-wide lens does and no longer feel that a photo with converging verticals "looks as if the building were falling down," as the old-time photo salon judges might have said...
 
don sorsa said:
Hullo -

How do you frame shots with a 21mm lens to avoid tilts? Attached are three recent shots to show my difficulties. (The B&W was adjusted in Elements and isn't as bad as the other 2.) I use the cv21/4 and viewfinder. Thanks for suggestions.

Don

Don,
I am working with that CV level on a double shoe. It's a great improvement but as phototone says there is no way out of the problem if you HAVE to tilt the camera forward or backwards because your standpoint is too high or not high enuff.

Only a shift lens solves the problem or a LF camera if you want a hardware solution. I've thought already to give up shooting any architecture with RF and buy a shift lens instead for my SLR, but to schlepp a second combo just for that purpose bothers me more.

PS offers a software solution which works fine. BUT you have to calculate the loss while framing ! So leave some space around the converging lines which you want to put vertical later.
Best,
Bertram
 
I also use the CV double-shoe adaptor with my 21mm lens. I've attached a pic below that shows the adapter with a Russian 20mm finder and the Hama double-bubble spirit level. The Hama is a great little level and only costs around $30 - there's a link to where you can buy it below.

Hama double-bubble spirit level

 
Bertram and Peter - Thanks, guess I gotta get the double-shoe and double-bubble level. (I even like typing 'double-bubble'! Excellent source.) I don't do much architectural work, but in general I prefer shots that are either deliberatly level or deliberately not. Thanks again all.

Don
 
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