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Correcting Converging Verticals With the Enlarger

ic-racer

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Joined
Feb 25, 2007
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I did this print a while back. I was using a 210mm Symmar-S on my 8x10 camera. That lens does not offer any movement on 8x10 format, so I had to tip the camera up to make this image.

Back in the darkroom I setup the enlarger like below, and made the second image. One nice thing about this is the sky gets less exposure while printing, so one does not have the image falloff darkness that would accompany a wide field lens with no center filter.

 
There are four movements of the enlarger involved.

Tilt of the negative (whole head)
Tilt of the baseboard
Tilt of the lensboard
Shift of the lensboard to re-center the image circle
 
I've done some of that before with good success -- and not much paper loss -- but nothing so elaborate.

Very cool.

The darkroom really should be thought of as being inside a HUGE camera.
 
Something I've been doing for over 50 years with my Durst enlargers with 35mm and 120 negatives for decades. My 5x enlarger had no tilts/shift, but it was still possible using DOF. My De Vere 5108 allows these movements, but it's not needed f corrected in camera with LF.

Perhaps though total correction can look false, we don't see it naturally like that although our brains mentally correct.

First I'm not talking about the example here. You can find plenty of examples of images of churches, looking up and corrected that exaggerate the height, so it's a balance to find what's most natural or suits your vision.

Ian
 

Good points. Wide lenses are always a little crazy.

There is a good example in the Ansel Adams book on making prints. On purpose he is showing a water tower with rectilinear correction and he points out how 'wrong' it looks.

If one gets to know Ansel's work, some of the most exciting images are from him doing unusual things. Like the image below, or using soft lenses, or printing to paper white, or burning the sky to black etc.

 
Another good point Ian makes is that one can do this even if the enlarger does not have 'all' the movements.
There frequently is enough depth of field on the baseboard side that one can get away without lens angle corrections (in enlargers that don't have that feature).
 
If the enlarger has no tilts, the lens board can sometimes be tilted with cardboard shims. Beware of light leaks when doing this. The easel can be tilted with books, boxes, or whatever is handy.
 
For 35mm I use the old Leitz easel that sits high on enlarger board, adjusted with ball and socket.
Ic-racer has a fantastic darkroom setup. Very impressive enlarger.
Another reason over adjustment may not look natural is that so many paintings and drawings is the concept of a vanishing point, so we may have grown used to it.
 
At the university, one of the guys in the dorm of very heavy persuasion got engaged and asked me to take the wedding photographs. His intended was also of the same persuasion as were all the members of both families and the guests. I was careful not to have any round or square objects in the background. When I went to print the proofs and later the albums for the couple and both parents, I experimented with tilting the easel to get the best look from all the negatives at one position. After the albums when out, everyone who attended said that no one had ever photographed their "real me". I earned enough from that one wedding from the albums and subsequent print orders that it paid for a year of school, room & board, books and supplies.
 
Jim Jones said:
If the enlarger has no tilts, the lens board can sometimes be tilted with cardboard shims. Beware of light leaks when doing this. The easel can be tilted with books, boxes, or whatever is handy.
Click to expand...

About 5 years ago I used an old paper box at the community darkroom and the "kids" thought I was some sort of darkroom wizard.
 

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