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In search of the perfect level

GrahamWelland

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Personally I'm not anal about the leveling so long as I've got one reference point. Even when everything is plumb I may end up adjusting it anyway so that it works better visually.

Btw, are you relying on eyeballing for level or are you letting C1 correct based on the back? That's certainly an option if you have an IQ back and you're 'close enough'.
 
P

Paul2660

Well-known member
About 80% of time, as long as I am shifting the back, I just eyeball the lineup, using the Acra viewfinder. However when buildings are involved, or structures where I am working to hold my perspective, the level on the back comes in extremely handy.

Paul
 
J

jlm

Workshop Member
i never used to use a level, and i'm a tripod user, rather relying on the eyeball.

made use of grids on the gg; and sometimes on the LCD (IQ160).

then i got that damn cube with two levels on it.

now the cambo has levels all over it…when they are there and convenient like that, you start to use them, which has been the slippery slope
 
Bob

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
GrahamWelland

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Btw, even if the tripod, cube and camera are all level it doesn't mean that the sensor actually is 100% level which ultimately is the only thing that matters.
 
Bob

Bob

Administrator
Staff member
GrahamWelland said:
Btw, even if the tripod, cube and camera are all level it doesn't mean that the sensor actually is 100% level which ultimately is the only thing that matters.
Click to expand...
I had a machine bed in California once that was carefully leveled, then it rained, and the soil expanded a bit unevenly and screwed it all up.
One reason that slabs of granite floating in mercury are so popular as stable bases.
-bob
 
Don Libby

Don Libby

Well-known member
GrahamWelland said:
Btw, even if the tripod, cube and camera are all level it doesn't mean that the sensor actually is 100% level which ultimately is the only thing that matters.
Click to expand...
You forgot landscape - that's never level! Sometime I just screw the level of the gear and level everything to fit the shot.
 
Chris Barrett

Chris Barrett

Member
I never even look at the levels on the tripod or camera. For level I place a small spirit level alongside the back itself (luckily it seems to be machined relatively square to the sensor). For pitch I place the level against the sliding back.

Works for Architecture... as long as it was built straight.

 
jotloob

jotloob

Subscriber Member
Chris Barrett said:
I never even look at the levels on the tripod or camera. For level I place a small spirit level alongside the back itself (luckily it seems to be machined relatively square to the sensor). For pitch I place the level against the sliding back.

Works for Architecture... as long as it was built straight.

Click to expand...
Great , simple , cheap and efficient :thumbs:
This is exactly what I do , except , that I use an EBISU CRYSTAL LEVEL .
Similar size .
 
T

thomas

New member
Fortunately, on my kit, the levels of the D4, as well as a large Arcatech spirit level mounted on top of the D4, as well as the levels of my WRS1000 do match. Also the resulting captures are corretly leveled (I do shoot a lot of architecture, so decent leveling is critical for me).
If the levels of the D4 would not be accurate, I'd send it to Arca for recalibration...
 
MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Let r = (# of shots ruined due to badly leveled camera) / (# of shots ruined due to bad focus, exposure, or composition).

For me, r is about zero. I hope one day for everything else to be good enough so that r shows up.

--Matt
 
J

jlm

Workshop Member
as i said before, the devil is the guy who put the levels on the cameras/cubes in the first place.
 
GrahamWelland

GrahamWelland

Subscriber & Workshop Member
Exactly! When there was only one, or zero, we were blissfully unaware of the inaccuracies. When you've got seven or eight and they're all slightly different the unnecessary irritation sets in.
 
MGrayson

MGrayson

Subscriber and Workshop Member
Which is why I level the cube, look at the Cambo's levels, shrug, avoid looking at the levels on the back, shrug again, and shoot.
:D
 
Wayne Fox

Wayne Fox

Workshop Member
GrahamWelland said:
Paul

The issue is if the tech camera isn't level, even when doing shifts, you'll end up cropping the image in post. Now obviously the solution there is just to shoot a little looser but you know how finicky people get about these things :)
Click to expand...
When shooting and stitching with primes, I always shoot a little loose. In fact with primes I end up doing some minor cropping on every image ... it’s never just right on. So not really doing it intentionally, but nearly every image can be improved compositionally by cropping. I do not have any standard sizes, I crop to what looks right to me, regardless of aspect ratios. My work is all priced based on the long side of an image only.

I find shifting doesn’t allow me a wide enough horizontal capture most of the time, so I’ve pretty much moved to nodal rotation. When I have to tilt the camera because I can’t use shift to get what I want keeping it level, I found panotools does a nice job of pulling things back to “normal”. I also “oversample” when I shoot so there is a lot of data, overlapping by 65-75%.
 
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Paul2660

Well-known member
Love both of those. They were shown in a earlier thread and I tried to locate them in the US. But seem to be only in Canada and Europe.

Paul Caldwell
 
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