articles/Nature/tiltandshift-page5

Tilt and Shift - part 5 of 1 2 3 4 5 6

by Paul Gallagher Published 01/08/2009

To date I have never been so tempted to move entirely to digital than before and this lens and camera combination certainly have proved tempting. There are other landscape-photographer-friends of mine out there using DSLRs and digital backs on large format cameras (which are ridiculously expensive!) so this will almost certainly be where I will arrive in the future. The one aspect of my photography I would miss is the flexibility of film and chemical processing.

I know for a fact I have made many exhibition prints that could have not been achieved using an entirely digital process, but I am sure technology will remedy this in time. For now I am still content watching the passing of technology, but soon, very soon I will pack away my film processing tanks, throw open the shutters of my darkroom and conduct all of my business from my office. (Blimey! - Ed.)

Users of large-format cameras and those old enough to have used folding 'pocket' cameras will be familiar with the term 'camera movements'. No camera worth its salt (and before about 1930) would have been without a 'rising front', others may also have had swing on the front as well. Such niceties were possible, in part, because of the lack of sophistication of the cameras; the lens was sittingt on a flat bed, with a flexible bellows. With no need for electronic integration of metering, aperture and focus it was far easier to move the lens around and vertical 'verticals' were expected, as a matter of course (no possibility of truing things up in Photoshop in those days and correcting for converging verticals in the darkroom was always difficult).

Image. The present line-up of PC lenses from both Nikon and Canon.

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