image circles and cropping

the lens on a camera projects a circular image onto the film. to shoot with large format film one needs a lens with a large image circle - big enough to cover the film and more. my 8x10 shooting is very low budget. i have been using a 210mm rodenstock lens which has an image circle more suitable for 4x5 film to shoot 8x10. most of the time it covers it, but in this shot it didn't. the reason is i used a lot of front tilt in order to get the foreground and background in focus. this swung the film sheet out of the image circle - resulting in the radical vignette effect seen here.

sadly i did not notice this on the ground glass when i was setting up the picture, probably because there was so much wind i could barely hang onto my darkcloth.
 
the solution? for now, a drastic crop... which i think looks good anyway. in the long term though i need a lens designed for 8x10 film. until then i'll try to avoid large movements.

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see on flickr

incidentally this is a photo of an old bridge near the lemontree feedlot, north of millmerran, on the darling downs, queensland.