Tilting the front or the back?

[henrikfoto]

Can anybody tell me what the difference is between tilting the front or the back like a Flexbody?

[Dustbak]

AFAIK.

Tilting the back will keep the composition as it is (your object is not moving up and down) but does change your perspective. Tilting the front will leave the perspective as it is but will move your object up or down in the frame. You have to do some shift (front) to keep it in the same place.

I always preferred tilting the back even though that would alter perspective somewhat.

[henrikfoto]

Thanks a lot. Will 1 degree tilting in the front be equal to 1 degree in the front?

[Joe Behar]

Tilting or swinging the rear standard is usually done when you need to avoid converging parallels and have already used all the rise/fall and left/right shift that you can in the front standard.

It might help to think of your camera as a projection system.

The lens project an image onto the rear film plane. Think of the film plane as the screen. If you tilt the screen back the top part of the image will be bigger than the bottom, and vice versa.

Film plane tilts and swings can also be used to help in making sure the subject, lens and film plane all intersect at the same line (Scheimpflug principle)

There are a number of books (and, I'm sure websites) that can explain all this with visual aids and I would highly suggest that you get familiar with these concepts. its amazing how they will help you with focus and perspective control.