Ely Cathedral

[ewx]

If you can't adjust your camera to eliminate convergence and don't feel like fiddling around in an editor, the only remaining option is to make it a feature. This is the west tower and the southwest transpet.

The southern aisle, facing west. Getting this lined up was very tricky and took ages; I have several wonky versions of it gracing my trash. There's still some convergence visible on the nearest pillars.

The Victorian ceiling of the nave. Again very fiddly to line up.

The Lady Chapel is a curious mixture of rather battered original building and recent restoration. There seems to some confusion over when it was damaged; the leaflet I got claims 1541, but Wikipedia thinks that most of the damage occurred a century later.

One of the guides told me who this bishop was, but I've forgotten.

Comments

[new-brunette.livejournal.com]

A very nice series. The pools of light on the second are exquisite. And the exposure of the Lady Chapel shot is excellent - very strong backlighting like that can be a real swine. You can see the quality of your lens, too, as that one has the potential of flaring badly.

[naath.livejournal.com]

ooooh, shiny.

What's convergence then?

[emperor]

It's interesting to observe the features you found worth of photographing. I've always found the space of the lady chapel its main feature, and the slightly silly statue over the altar a bit of a distraction.

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

What's convergence?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Convergence refers to parallel lines (in space) coming out as converging lines in a photograph.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It's a nice lens. I'm not sure I'd have got the same results with the 17-85.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It's a lovely building. I liked the contrast of the statue against the rest though, and the banded structure to that particular view. I was right up against the back wall; I'm not sure I'd have go away with being any further forward.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Tall things looking smaller at the top because you are looking up at them.
Avoidable by using horrendously expensive specialist lenses (http://www.shutterbug.net/equipmentreviews/lenses/0801sb_tilt/), or faking it by distorting the image afterwards (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/96029/102-1882874-5034536).
(Or, to some extent, using a wide angle lens and not pointing upwards, and cropping most of the picture away.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Or use a view camera.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Parallel lines going wonky because the film plane and the subject plane are not parallel. Eyes do it too, but it's more noticable in photographs because your brain's correction mechanisms don't cope so well with them.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

This is the only way I get to see inside cathedrals. (Can't go inside them for religious reasons.)

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

That second picture is really rather fantastic.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Or glue together a cheap lens and a rubber sink plunger - http://www.dennisonbertram.com/hackmaster/2005/02/tilt-shift-pc-lens.htm
http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/homemade_t_s_lens.php
(You could argue that that is a view camera.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Interesting...