Sorry for not posting for a while. I thought I'd flip over a new page and start talking about photography again. A couple months ago I bought a DSLR attachment for my 4x5:If you're wondering how it works its sort of like a 6x7 or 6x9 graflok attachment but you attach a DSLR to it instead. You simply take your ground glass/plate holder off and attach this to the Graflok then mount your camera to it.It's great if you miss the camera movements of the 4x5 and use a lot of perspective control this is a nice alternative to Tilt/Shift lenses and certainly a lot cheaper.I was super excited to use this and proceeded to setup the kit for a test shoot. Its great but has a couple caveats:*It's not great if you have anything wider than a 150mm (50mm in 135/DSLR format). It's mainly to do with the distance between image plane/sensor and the lenses back element. The DSLR mount is raised off the attachment for clearance thus increasing the distance between the lenses back element and the sensor. My 150mm worked fine but the 90mm touched the backside of the attachment. Thankfully there weren't any damages to the lens. Solutions: You could use an extremely recessed lens plate. *Camera movements are restricted. OK, you can't us a 90mm or less. No problem. So I continued working with the 150 and tried to build a 'stitched' panorama using the full horizontal movements of the 4x5. I quickly discovered there are some restrictions - after a certain amount of movement, in either vertical or horizontal movement you'll hit the barreling of the DSLR mount. Not physically but optically. I don't think there are any solutions, not that I can think of anyway.Besides ranting on about the shortcomings of a product that's way cheaper than a tilt/shift lens made by Canon or Nikon or Schneider (less than 10% of the price) its uses are limited to longer lenses. Anything wider, say a 50 or less would need a specialty lens with small rear element and bag bellows and both those items would cost a fortune. It would probably explain why tilt/shift lenses from any of the mentioned companies cost more than expected as they are designed for photographers that require camera movements. I can say this though, it is fun to use and slowed me down to something resembling the use of my 4x5. The plus side is that I didn't need to use my loupe (if you have live view) nor did I have to make 8+ minute exposures (if you have high ISO capable cameras). I still haven't used it for macro photography but I'm sure it'll perform quite well.I've attached a couple of sample images from my test. These are stitched panoramas. I will say this - its made photography a lot more interesting especially in a world ruled by digital cameras.
ah ha!