Tilt Shift Lenses

[Mike Farley]

For a while now I have thought that a tilt shift lens might be useful, but they are horrendously expensive. At the IPC Media/Sony event I attended this last Tuesday, Joe Cornish mentioned that he was using a tilt shift adapter on his Sony A7R, which was working well for him and is a much cheaper option. The adapter fits between the camera body and the lens, which needs to be designed for a D/SLR with manual aperture and focussing controls. The distance between the rear element of a native CSC lens is much shorter than for D/SLRs since there is no mirror of which to take account, so the adapter fits in the space which is needed anyway to attach the lens. Of course, most CSCs have a crop factor, which reduces the usefulness the solution when a wider angle of view is required. On the other hand, tilt and shift lenses are designed to have a larger image circle than conventional ones to accommodate the adjustments, which means that vignetting at wider apertures could be an issue on full frame cameras such as the A7R.

Joe Cornish uses the Kipon brand and I have found this review.

http://www.michaelmeyerphoto.com/daily_ ... on-to-nex/

[davidb]

Have you used Perspective Warp in Photoshop?

[Mike Farley]

Have you used Perspective Warp in Photoshop?

Adjusting perspective is only one use for a tilt shift lens, the other being extending depth of field for which there is not yet a Photoshop tool. Personally, I do not find that Perspective Warp always works well, even the new enhanced tool in Photoshop CC, and that it is better to get it right in camera if at all possible.

[davidb]

True (get it right at point of capture).

I wasn't aware of the depth of field element of the lens. I've thought that it would be a useful lens but couldn't justify it by cost or the amount of use it would get. But I would be interested in seeing your results.

[Mike Farley]

I wasn't aware of the depth of field element of the lens. I've thought that it would be a useful lens but couldn't justify it by cost or the amount of use it would get. But I would be interested in seeing your results.

It might be a while, as I do have neither a lens nor adapter. I mainly posted as I have not heard about the adapter before and thought others might be in the same position, so passed the information on. It's definitely a much cheaper option than a dedicated lens. What I do will probably depend on the decision I eventually make regarding my camera gear going forward. There will be examples of what tilt/shift can do to be found on the web, although I doubt that few will be of the standard Joe Cornish put on display last Tuesday.

[davidc]

Have you tried freelensing?

http://petapixel.com/2013/04/30/a-photo ... hift-lens/

Or you could check out the tilt shift offerings from lensbaby, much cheaper than the high end kit and will let you see if tilt shift photography is something you want to do in a serious way before the serious outlay.

[Mike Farley]

Have you tried freelensing?

http://petapixel.com/2013/04/30/a-photo ... hift-lens/

Or you could check out the tilt shift offerings from lensbaby, much cheaper than the high end kit and will let you see if tilt shift photography is something you want to do in a serious way before the serious outlay.

Freelensing is certainly an option. I have not tried it, but it looks a bit fiddly for anything other than occasional use. Experimenting initially with one of the Lensbaby products is an alternative, although atilt/shift adapter and secondhand manual lens would not cost much more than some of the high end Lensbaby offerings.