Canon Tilt / Shift lens - Shift
Another advantage of the tilt / shift lens is the ability to shift the lens up, down or even left to right. The biggest advantage to shifting the lens is it gives you the ability to correct perspective. This is really helpful at eliminating the leaning effect you get when you look up at buildings, trees etc. with a wide angle lenses. I think these two images demonstrate perspective better then I can explain it. I used shift to pretty much square the Alaska State Capitol building within the frame in the above photo. Below is a much older photo of the of the same Capitol building taken from the same location with a lens that I couldn’t shift.
I think the difference is very obvious in this example.
Here is the Canon tilt / shift lens from above with the lens shifted all the way to the left.
The ability to shift is also helpful when creating panoramics. In fact the photo of Mt. McKinley in the masthead of my blog was taken with a tilt / shift lens. I didn’t move my camera, I just shifted to the left, middle and right and combined the images later in Photoshop. Photos captured this way blend together with almost zero effort since the camera isn’t re-positioned.
Yesterday’s post touched on using tilt.
September 12th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Another interesting post Ron. The advice on the panoramic is something I hadn’t realized. The parallax on the panos have always been a weird thing for me. I guess the T&S would yield more keepers in this case. Do you think these lenses would help DOF-wise for those “thick forest” type of shots while using a sharper aperture like f8?
September 12th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
Thanks Richard.
I originally purchased the tilt / shift with panoramics in mind - they really do go together much easier since there really isn’t parallax issues.
The tilt may not be much help in those “thick forest” type shots because the subject matter is somewhat vertical. The tops or bottoms of the trees may end up out of focus unless your are shooting more intimate type.
Ron
September 13th, 2007 at 9:49 am
Hi Ron, Love what you are doing with your new canon tilt/shift lens! Do you think the permanent fund would cover the cost of it this year?? Your photo blog is something I look forward to every morning. I open your photo e-mail 1st every day. Always nice to see a beautiful and interesting photo to start my day! Janet
September 13th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Hi Janet,
Good to hear from you and thanks for the comments - it is always great to receive such nice feedback!
You know I bet the permanent fund will cover the cost of one of these, they run about $1,100 at B&H. It could come in handy in PS
Ron
October 12th, 2007 at 3:42 am
Glad to see someone is staying on top of things.