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by Paul Skoczylas on Mon Jul 08, 2019 7:38 pm
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When shooting with my TSE lens, I aim to keep the camera level, and use the shift to capture higher (or rarely, lower) scenes.  All the textbooks say that this improves architecture shots by not making the buildings "lean" back.  I find, however, that the images taken like this don't necessarily "feel" right.  Have a look, for example at the shot of Notre Dame I posted here: 
https://www.naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=284265

The vertical lines are vertical and parallel, but to my eye, it feels like the tops of the towers are too "heavy".  I think that when the human eye sees a building like this, the tops are smaller--we look up at them.  So when the lines are parallel, it doesn't look quite right.  But I can't seem to get the adjustments right to make it look "right".

Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on how to improve this?  Or do you think the parallel verticals look right the way they are?

Thanks,

-Paul
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by E.J. Peiker on Mon Jul 08, 2019 7:52 pm
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While your attached photo looks good to me, it is not an unusual feeling because even when we stand in front of a building, the top is farther away than the bottom so it should appear smaller.  If you could back up to where you could use a 50mm lens on a full frame camera you would get approximately what our eye sees which still has a smaller top than bottom but not nearly as huge of a difference as we get when we are close to the subject and have to use a wide angle lens which is usually the case when photographing large buildings.  Some research I have done on this points to a more natural look being about an 80-90% correction.  In other words, frame your shot, shift to get perfectly parallel lines then back-off 10-20%.  

Interestingly in Capture One's perspective correction tool, the out of the box default is 90%.  When you draw the lines that should be parallel, unless you change the percentage, it defaults to a 90% correction.  Their documentation cites that they do this as it provides a more natural look for most people.
 

by SantaFeJoe on Mon Jul 08, 2019 8:26 pm
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What I notice on the image is that it is not level. The left side is slightly higher than the right. It is most noticeable in distance of the tips of the towers from the top of the frame. Using an envelope along the edge of the image to check squareness, it is very obvious. I think the perspective is good.

Joe
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by Paul Skoczylas on Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:24 am
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SantaFeJoe wrote:What I notice on the image is that it is not level. The left side is slightly higher than the right. It is most noticeable in distance of the tips of the towers from the top of the frame. Using an envelope along the edge of the image to check squareness, it is very obvious. I think the perspective is good.

Joe
I think it is level...  The shooting position is slightly left of centre, and the north tower is a bit larger than the south one (not necessarily taller, but otherwise larger).  Together, this makes it closer to the camera, and therefore a bit higher up in the image. Look at the line across the top of the tympanums--it is horizontal.

I'm glad you think the perspective is good, though!

-Paul
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by Paul Skoczylas on Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:26 am
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E.J. Peiker [excerpted] wrote:While your attached photo looks good to me,...  Some research I have done on this points to a more natural look being about an 80-90% correction.  In other words, frame your shot, shift to get perfectly parallel lines then back-off 10-20%.  
Thanks, E.J.  I did play with that in Photoshop, but never found something I was happy with, so I left the lines vertical.

-Paul
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by Paul Skoczylas on Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:29 am
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Here's another example with the same effect on a much smaller building:  https://www.naturescapes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=202809


The verticals are vertical, but again to me, the top of the church seems too heavy.

-Paul
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Last edited by Paul Skoczylas on Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:30 am, edited 1 time in total.
 

by E.J. Peiker on Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:29 am
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Photoshop is an awful tool for that because it compresses the vertical when you do the correction. If you do use Photoshop, then after straightening do a Ctrl-A and stretch the image back out vertically. Other tools like the one in C1 compensates for that automatically. But your question was about a T/S lens and on that, adjust the shift until you get perfectly vertical and then back off just a bit to give it that natural ~50mm look of the top being 10-20% narrower than the bottom.
 

by Paul Skoczylas on Tue Jul 09, 2019 11:33 am
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E.J. Peiker [excerpted] wrote:  But your question was about a T/S lens and on that, adjust the shift until you get perfectly vertical and then back off just a bit to give it that natural ~50mm look of the top being 10-20% narrower than the bottom.
Generally, I level the camera first, and then shift to get the framing I want.  That way, it's always vertical.  It's a bit trickier to do what you suggest, as it means adjusting camera angle and shift simultaneously.  Perhaps just angling the camera slightly up instead of levelling it, and then shifting to frame will work...

-Paul
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by Scott B on Tue Jul 09, 2019 2:24 pm
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Paul it has been some time since I have done significant architectural photography but back in the film days we had to decide the use of the image to determine how to shoot it. If the customer was an architectural firm than we would typically shoot the image like your first image avoiding putting the camera at a low perspective point. If the customer was a general consumer we would shoot for a 90% correction as E. J. suggests. It was easier then when 36mm was wide. Now people have seen so many ultra side angle images their sense of the top being smaller is actually distorted compared to reality. If you want to be realistic go for 90% or more. If you want to be creative write your own rules. My personal taste is for about 90% correction.
 

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