Focusing...front or rear or both?

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Hello again. I am also interested in knowing as to the purpose of front and rear focusing on a LF. Some entry level LFs offer rear only, others front and rear. Is this very important? I would think focusing on one standard would be enough (?). Thanks for your help! BRN

-- Bernard R. Negrin (bnegrin@paramountplating.com), August 24, 2000

Answers

From your other posting about doing table top subjects, you will find that a camera that focusses both front and rear standards will be a great help. Generally, you will use the lens standard to set the image size, and the back standard to set the focus. Much easier than moving the whole tripod and camera back and forth just that little bit that you need.

-- Tony Brent (ajbrent@mich.com), August 24, 2000.

Tony is correct. Use the back to focus with closeups, front to size the image. At 1-to-1 closeup, not much focusing takes place with moving the front. Also, with long lenses, it becomes very difficult to reach the front focus knob with long bellows extension. This is especially true with 8x10, where you may be using lenses of 20 inchs or more focal length. Saves a lot of stretching. Except for technical cameras, the better ones have rear focus.

Good shooting, Doug.

-- Doug Paramore (dougmary@alanet.com), August 24, 2000.


Another thought on focus...when you are 'almost' in focus in a close up ... on a monorail type camera, moving the camera back and forth on its tripod mounting block serves as a convenient adjustment as well.

-- Fred Leif (frederickl@aol.com), August 24, 2000.

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