Re: The rising front ie Adams: The difference between moving a lensand cropping.

[Ellis Vener <evphoto@xxxxxxxxxx>]

James Romeo wrote:

> I go to my frount window with my Hasselblad and a 50mm lens. I place the camera on the window sill I see the 6 stories building from the top to a lot of East 78th st. I now go out on the fire escape take off the waste level finder and put on the
> 
>  prism I now put the camera to my eye I now have little of East 78thst but I now have water towers on the top of building's 5 blocks away.Bolth are a form of croping.   James Romeo
> 

James,

It doesn't matter which viewfinder you put on the camera, if you keep
the camera in the same place.

To be pedantic (and accurate) moving from one position to the other is
not a form of cropping. it is changing your point of view, which not
only changes how much you see in your  final image, but the relationship
of the elements in the image to each other. Why am I harping on
language? Hopefully to help all of us (including me, and it is certainly
not my intention to attack you James so I hope you aren't taking
offense.) think more clearly about what it is we are doing. When you
shift the lens vertically or horizontally on a camera you get  a
different effect than by shifting the back. Whether or not the
difference between a lens and a back shift is evident on your
groundglass, in your viewfinder, or on your film depends on the spatial
relationships between the collection of objects or people being
photographed and the spatial relationship between that collection and
the lens. 

Cropping is also a form of editing but because you are not changing your
point of view,  the apparent spatial  relationships are unchanged.

Ellis Vener
Houston, Texas