Grabkapelle Revisited

Alan Winston, who's Blog "Block Play": http://blockplay.blogspot.com/, clued me in on a program very useful in correcting perspective: www.shiftn.de when working with items that render themselves to look better when this correction is made.

In my early youth, I worked for a company in the City of Detroit, that did all their photography using View Cameras. View Cameras usually come in 8 x 10 film size and have a number of corrections that can make almost anything appear straight. The film plane can be swung from left to right, up and down and tilted almost 75° from vertical. Likewise in the front where the lens is located, those same movements can be obtained. This allows for a great many corrections in perspective. General Motors used View Cameras when photographing each years new model automobiles for example.

Another method that works well is a tripod. Tripods work best when you are photographing objects that fit into the tripods category. Scale models are a good example. Height can be adjusted to give one that street level look. A sharper image is captured when using a cable release or the cameras self timer. Biggest problem with tripods, come in setting them up to be just right. I'm just to lazy to go through all the effort involved. But to give one a look at what can be done, these two photos show what I did in about ten minutes of set-up time using my digital cameras self timer. My camera is an old third generation model and thanks to its viewing screen in the back, I do not have to worry about parallax correction and digital photography is great for macro work as the depth of field problem is almost nonexistent.

Another tool that helps a great deal, is a good photo program. I have only a simple photo program that came pre installed on my Macbook. This program although allowing for just minor corrections gives me enough to correct for exposure, cropping and rotation. Speaking of cropping, I'm still working on improving the background to enhance the overall effect.

As soon as time allows, I'm going to give Alan's suggestion a try, for I do admire the quality of his photos and I look forward to visiting his page daily.