Tilt-shift staycation

[stevelee]

I'm considering renting a tilt-shift lens, probably the 24mm, to play with for a week. I'd pick a week in which I wouldn't have a lot of other things going on, and spend a lot of time getting to know the lens and what things of interest I might use it for. I have a 6D2 as my only FF body.

I'm not interested in trying the miniature effect. I haven't done any work for realtors in several years and don't anticipate that being a factor in the future, so this will be just for fun and general education/edification.

I would like to have a plan in mind beforehand.

So do you have specific suggestions for things I might try? I live in a small college town near a lake, and Charlotte is about 20 miles away for cityscapes. There are interesting old courthouses within 50 miles, but I don't have an idea of how I might exploit the features of the lens in photographing them. Photoshop does a good enough job with vertical convergence that I wonder whether the t-s has enough of an advantage in shooting them to be worth the trouble.

Does this sound like a fun project for a week, or would you recommend I take the rental fee and go to a really good steak place for dinner instead?

 

[privatebydesign]

There are several other things you can do. One that is often missed is the 'square' stitch, this gives you 4 images that are shifted around the center, it maximizes the image circle and keeps the worst of the edge distortion out f the image too. Superb way of getting a very high MP image.

You can also use the 24 with both the 1.4 and 2x TC's, you do lose a tiny bit of IQ but, especially with the 1.4, it is barely noticeable even on pixel peeping.

But I find the most dramatic difference in using T/S lenses that photoshop absolutely can't replicate is with tilt. Shoot a landscape at f5.6 with the correct degree of tilt to get the land all in sharp focus from nearest foreground to furthest background and compare it to the same shot at f11-16 with no tilt relying on dof for focus. You will buy the lens on that one comparison.

 

[stevelee]

There are several other things you can do. One that is often missed is the 'square' stitch,
. . .
But I find the most dramatic difference in using T/S lenses that photoshop absolutely can't replicate is with tilt. Shoot a landscape at f5.6 with the correct degree of tilt to get the land all in sharp focus from nearest foreground to furthest background and compare it to the same shot at f11-16 with no tilt relying on dof for focus. You will buy the lens on that one comparison.

Thanks. I was vaguely aware of the tilt focus things because of how people used view cameras, but might not have thought of it for my project. The square stitch I would never have thought of, even though I do panoramas in which I stitch together both side-by-side and above-and-below shots. I imagine the t-s version would have much less distortion to deal with.

Now you have me afraid that I will like the lens way too much. I do have rather large credit limits, though.

 

[Zeidora]

What problem will a T/S lens solve for you? Akin to: I want to get close, so want/need a macro lens. Once you can answer that question, you will have the solution.

Re understanding a bit more about T/S, look at the literature for Large Format photography. I like Strobel View Camera Techniques, also Steve Simmons Using the View Camera, or Jack Dykinga Large Format Nature Photography. With a T/S on dSLR, you only have limited control of the front standard. [You can fake it a bit by putting camera/sensor at angle and counter-correcting with tilt, but LF has much more adjustment range.] It helps to understand the difference between shift and tilt and realizing that a dSLR T/S has center tilt, not base tilt as on many LF cameras. That changes how you approach adjusting the lens settings. Understand Scheimpflug principle and you will be much more successful with a T/S lens. Otherwise it may be an exercise in frustration tolerance. You will also spend a lot of time using the magnifying tool on the back LCD examining every portion of the image at high mag. Or shoot tethered with a laptop.

I get the impression that T/S lenses are mainly use with shift. Tilt IMHO is the much more powerful adjustment tool, but it is more difficult to master. Good Luck!

 

[privatebydesign]

I'm always suspicious when people rattle on about Scheimpflug, the truth is the understanding of Scheimpflug is not the most important aspect of understanding what tilt is doing especially to small range tilt lenses like those used on DSLR's. Focus is every bit as important to tilt use, Scheimpflug was interested in very large 'J' point distances because he was using cameras from a balloon, we use much smaller 'J' points and so the impact of focus on the plane of focus when used in conjunction with tilt is the key.

This was all laid out by Harold Merklinger in his seminal work on focusing the view camera http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/FVC161.pdf
and addendum
http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/FVCADNDM.pdf

The interaction of the Scheimpflug Line and the Hinge Line is here http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/VuCamTxt.pdf

And there are excellent animated gif's here http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/using-lens-tilt-on-your-digital-slr/

Indeed Kieth is a member and occasional poster here and if you only want to read one or two articles I'd recommend his.