210mm tilt useful? 150mm? Rear tilt?

[Pemihan]

I have a 210mm Rodenstock I'm planning to have mounted for my Cambo WRS. I'm thinking if I should have it mounted with tilt/swing but don't know if it is useful for this focal length. Anyone have experience with this, maybe also on Cambo Actus or other technical cameras?

Also have a Cambo SK 150mm that I'm thinking about having changed to T/S. What are your thoughts on that?

I have the SK120 Aspheric in T/S mount and find it very useful at times, but am not sure about the longer focal lengths.

If using an Actus with rear tilt adapter, do you find that useful?

Thanks
Peter

 

[GrahamWelland]

Peter,

I use the Rodenstock 210 APO on my Actus DB2 and also SK 120 & Rodenstock 135 APO. The Actus DB needs an extended rail/bellows for this lens and with the WRS obviously, you would similarly need quite some extension on the lens. In the case of the Actus the tilt/swing plane is essentially at or near the optical centre of the lens which makes movements a little simpler to manage than when those tilts on a long barrel or rear adapter are some way from the centre of the lens (Tilt will also rise/fall the lens if it's a long way from the plane of the lens itself).

In my case though, I primarily use the longer focal lengths for subject compression in landscape and so a lot of the use is at or close to infinity which really doesn't need tilt to any degree. I have shot it using tilts on a few occasions but they've been the exception vs the rule but it works fine you want to extend the plane of focus without stopping down too far or for closer subjects. That said, I know that with my copy of the Rodie 210 that I get better acuity at f11-f16 vs say f8.

Regarding rear tilt, I assume you're looking at using the new rear adapter? I have that for my Actus but I use it for compositional purposes (looming for foreground or background perspective control) rather than for focus purposes. If you were considering this to provide tilt for focus along with a non-T/S lens then the long barrel effects would apply as mentioned earlier with a lot more tilt/re-positioning with rise/fall etc (which was my criticism of using tilt adapters with my Alpa).

 

[dchew]

Hi Peter,

I've used tilt with the 150, but rarely. The DoF wedge is so darn narrow (usually only a few degrees), and the amount of tilt required is pretty high to get anywhere close to the ground.

Standing on a hill along side some flat water is one of those rare situations:

Dave

 

[Pemihan]

Thanks guys. With the 120 I find tilt very useful but I will probably keep the 150 as is and get the 210 mounted without T/S. Sounds like this makes the most sense.
Regarding back tilt I will need to do some more reading on that subject.