I'm considering an Ebony SW45 as a travel camera for historic architecture and landscape. It's light, beautifully made and rigid. But can someone tell me how a camera with virtually no back movements can be suitable for wide-angle architecture?

-- Arthur Gottschalk (Arthurwg@aol.com), August 20, 2001

Answers

Arthur, As long as it has a bag bellows an plenty of front rise, it should work fine. Rear tilt is usually unnecessary for architecture and rear swing is usually only used for minor focus corrections or to control horizontal prespective which is not a bad thing. With a short lens, you don't have to do much in the way of movement to affect a significant change.

-- Bruce Wehman (bruce.wehman@hs.utc.com), August 20, 2001.

Bruce is absolutely right. Have a look at the Ebony RSW45 with only front rise and front tilt.... all the movements you will need for the majority of the situations you describe.....more than something like the Silvestri T30 or the cambo Wide which is designed specifically for such purposes.

-- Matt Sampson (mattsampson@btinternet.com), August 20, 2001.

Arthur I use the SW45. It has 60mm of front rise and is usable with lenses as short as the 35mm Apo Grandagon (with 10mm rec. lens board) because of its very flexible bellows. In fact it has enough rise to exceed the coverage of my 75/4.5 Grandagon-N. Regards,

-- Trevor Crone (trevor.crone@uk.dreamcast.com), August 22, 2001.

I just bought the Ebony 45S. The reason being, every professional reference I have found on architectural photography (and some architectural photographers on another news group) have said that back shift is pretty invaluable. Maybe it's not so important for historic architecture. I don't know.

The nice thing about the 45S is that it can handle lenses from very wide (they claim 37mm on recessed boar) up to 400mm. So pretty useful for landscape and the like.

Also it has really extensive movements... its the nearest thing to a folding monorail.

Its heavier than the other cameras, mentioned but not by much. It weighs 2.1Kg instead of about 1.5 for the others.

The only problem is that the additional flexibility costs more money. It was a scary purchase... but then I probably will never need another camera like this... and it looks incredibly cool with all that titanium.

Must take a picture with it sometime :-)

-- Paul Freeman (architekmd@hotmail.com), August 25, 2001.