Stereo camera to tilt or not to tilt

[himself]

so there wont need to be a complete (as in, like totally complete) separation of the 2 sides?

 

[johnielvis]

nope---in fact every portrait camera I've ever seen has just the rigid dividers in the back---so too the olde tyme multiple picture portrait cameras too---the thing is you can't fold it flat without taking out the divider (that is, you can't collapse the bellows all the way if there's a rigid divider in there) AND a shorter divider will limit your bellows draw for close ups...it depends on the lens used.....and the front movements too now...if you are shifting the front lenses, that will move the cone of light....

you may just want to make an attachable BACK for your existing camera with the dividers installed--the dividers would extend INTO the existing camera bellows space--then use special front "double lens" boards--then you can have a stereo conversion kit with full movements

most of these things had a single bellows with a septum down the middle--you don't need COMPLETE light SEALING--just a divider to keep the light from one striking the other and getting a double image---unless you want a hipster type double vision camera....

 

[himself]

the lens board on my build isn't big enough to accommodate 2 lenses sadly.

my original thought was to use 2 short lenses, like maybe 60mm off an old folder (focus on the lens rather than the bellows), so I never intended to have a collapsible camera anyway. maybe now that I'm going to use tilt I'll go for half and half and only put the wall in the hard part.

 

[TimFox]

I use view cameras, and often use tilt/seing and rise/shift. I almost always use rise.
To keep the perspective constant, you keep the film plane vertical. Shifting left-right or rising up-down (either or both the lens and film) changes the region mapped onto the film plane.
Tilting the lens board with respect to the film plane changes the plane of best focus, but does not change the perspective. It may change the exact region mapped onto the film plane, depending on the tilt axis. This is typically done to keep the meadow in front of you and the snow-capped mountain in the background in focus, allowing some defocus where the mountains reach the ground.
If you tilt the film plane, you do change (or distort) the perspective. If the film plane is tilted backwards, for example, the vertical parallel lines on skyscrapers will converge on the film.