Boiler (Tilt-shift)

[TCampbell]

Good thread. Been gone all day. I was thinking--this might look interesting rendered very,very high-contrast, almost Kodalith-like, or maybe as if it were printed on something like TP6 B&W (very high-contrast) enlarging paper. I took a quick look at it in a different way, just slightly rotating it, so that a small amount of the window and brickwork was eliminated, adding a vignette, then toning it a cool,dark color and adding a little digital fill.

View attachment 46926

Is this any better? Or just a weird re-work?

I do like what you've done with it, and the left side isn't as distracting with the slight crop (although I will revisit and try a wider crop to include more of the building / machine-shop wall.) I also like the intensified contrast. The color is a bit green but I like the contrast.

I took the image into Silver Efex Pro and started playing with the B&W processing to find a contrast and film that I like I liked, but I still think I need to improve the composition.

This has been very educational for me. I appreciate all the perspectives on what I might do to improve this. Something about the old hard iron and rivets on the boiler keeps drawing me to it (and it's actually in an area of the village that I don't think was intended as an exhibit.)

 

[Helen B]

For what it is worth, here's my general focusing and tilting technique for a T/S lens (not an LF camera).

First I visualize the optimum plane for the wedge of apparent focus to be based on. This may be at some odd angle, especially for subjects that have no obvious planar nature.

With the camera framed roughly and no lens movements, I focus on the area likely to be the closest to the best focus point.

Like amolitor, envision the three planes that obey the hinge rule and rotate/tilt the lens accordingly, while reframing to account for the yaw.

Adjust tilt and focus as necessary. I often find it easiest to adjust the tilt until I get an even amount of defocus, then refocus.

A magnifying eyepiece is very useful. If I take my glasses off and get my eye right up to the eyepiece I can see the whole frame even when using the Nikon magnifying eyepiece. This gives the largest image on my retina, and hence the best image for manual focusing. This is almost as accurate as focusing in live view, and can be easier.

 

[amolitor]

What on earth do you do that uses a T/S pretty much every day? That is, of course, a rhetorical question because far be it from me to snoop etc.

 

[Helen B]

I take product photographs, though they are mostly more like still life pictures. I use the 85 mm PC-E the most, the 45 mm the second (which I also use as a general purpose lens) and the 24 mm the least. If there was a Nikon 120 mm PC-E I would get it. I am tempted by the Schneider or the Hartblei/Zeiss, but then I wonder if I shouldn't just do it properly and use a digital back on my Arca. Now that we have begun to shoot more video (using a D800E), having the set of three matching PC-E lenses is a great all-round solution.

 

[amolitor]

Thanks! So the classic "tilt it forward to make the plane of focus horizontal" game still lives!

That was The First Picture I ever took with a 4x5. I had just finished my Bender kit, and had just gotten an answer back to my frantic "Which was does the film go into the holder?!!" query on Usenet, so it was late evening. I took a tabletop picture of, I think, a hunting knife. It wasn't terribly good and the negative got lost in a move some time.

ETA: err, obviously product photos aren't merely "make it horizontal"