View camera

The view camera is a type of camera with a very long history (some modern examples are often mistaken for antiques), but they are still used today by professional and amateur photographers who want full control of their images. The view camera is basically a light-tight assembly comprised of a flexible mid-section, or bellows, attached to a device that holds a film sheet, photo plate or digital imager at one end (the rear standard) and a similar one that holds the lens at the other end (the front standard). The front and rear standards are not fixed relative to each other (unlike most cameras). Movement of the front and rear standards allows the photographer to move the lens and film plane independently for precise control of the image's focus, depth of field and perspective.

View camera lenses

A view camera lens typically consists of:

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• A front lens element, sometimes referred to as a cell.
• A shutter, which consists of an electronic or spring-actuated iris which controls exposure duration. (On early lenses, air-actuated shutters were sometimes used, and others had no moving shutter at all, a simple lens cap was used instead.)
• The aperture diaphragm
• A lensboard
• A rear lens element (or cell).

Almost any lens of the appropriate coverage area may be used with almost any view camera. All that is required is that the lens be mounted on a lensboard compatible with the camera. A lensboard is simply a flat board, typically square in shape and made of either metal or wood, designed to lock securely into the front standard of a particular view camera, typically engineered for quick removal and replacement for swapping lenses in the field. Not all lensboards work with all models of view camera, though some cameras may be designed to work with a common lensboard type. Lensboards usually come with a hole sized according to the shutter size, often called the Copal Number. Copal is the most popular maker of leaf shutters for view camera lenses. The following is a list of the Copal Number and the corresponding diameter required in the lensboard to mount the shutter:

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• Copal #0 - 34.6 mm
• Copal #1 - 41.6 mm
• Copal #3 - 65 mm
• Copal #3s - 64.5 mm

The lens is designed to split into two pieces, the front and rear elements mounting to the shutter and lensboard. This is usually done by a trained technician, but mechanically inclined photographers often do this themselves.

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View camera lenses are designed with both focal length and coverage in mind - a 300mm lens may be a normal focal length or a telephoto lens depending on whether it was designed to cover a 4x5 or 8x10 image area. Most lenses are designed to cover more than just the image area to allow for "movement" - positioning the front or rear standards out of linear alignment for perspective and focus control.

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Focusing involves moving the front standard closer to or further away from the rear standard, the lens itself does not have nor need any internal helical focusing device. The lens elements do not need to move in relation to one another.

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Very long telephoto lenses or very short wide-angle lenses may require the camera be fitted with special bellows to bring the subject into proper focus, as the regular bellows will be either unable to extend far enough to accommodate long lenses, or collapse tight enough for extremely short ones. "Bag bellows" are common wide-angle photography accessories, replacing the accordion-folded bellows with a simple light-tight leather or synthetic bag. Recessed lensboards are also sometimes used to get the rear element of a wide angle lens close enough to the film plane to achieve focus. Some cameras offer extra-long rails and bellows to mount the standards to for long lens work.

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Zoom lenses are unheard of in view camera photography, but there are "convertible" lenses that allow the photographer to add and remove lens elements in the field to alter the optical formula, resulting in a new focal length. These are popular with field photographers who would prefer to save weight by carrying one convertible lens rather than two or three regular lenses. The trade off is a smaller maximum aperture than is usual with regular lenses, and sometimes convertible lenses are not corrected for chromatic aberration, making them useless with color film.

Related Topics:
Zoom lenses - Chromatic aberration

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Soft focus lenses introduce spherical aberration deliberately into the optical formula for a pleasing ethereal effect. The amount of soft-focus effect is determined by either aperture size or special disks that fit into the lens to modify the aperture shape. Some antique lenses have a lever which controls the softening effect by altering the optical formula on the fly, similar to modern SLR soft focus lenses.

Related Topics:
Soft focus - Spherical aberration - Ethereal - Aperture

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Current large format lens manufacturers:

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• Schneider Kreuznach - Price-no-object high quality lenses.
• Nikon - Noted for its high quality telephoto designs.
• Rodenstock - Extremely high quality, reasonably priced.
• Cooke - Interesting and expensive soft focus and color-corrected convertible lenses.
• Congo - Budget lenses, but offering interesting soft focus and telephoto designs.
• Seagull/Shen-Hao/Sinotar - Budget lenses.
• Sinar - Rebranded Rodenstock lenses.
• Caltar - Rebranded Rodenstock lenses.
• Linhof - Rebranded Rodenstock and Schneider lenses.