Canon will introduce new tilt-shift lenses with a high-megapixel camera [CR2]

Jan 29, 2011
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Ah, I wish... that would be the publishers.
The last involvement I had with the book was checking proofs last year.
The US launch of the book was delayed quite a bit.
I did buy my printer, the Pro-2000, and few other bits and pieces through your affiliate links so I’m trying! :)
 
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Don't need AF for tilt or shift.
Yet, a 14mm TS can also be used like any UWA lens, so AF makes sense. I'm eagerly waiting for this one!
Certainly much sharper (corners) than the EF 17mm TSE.
I don't agree. Using a tripod...the first thing you do with a shift movement is compose, meter (in Manual) and then focus. Then you shift the font element. The plane of focus stays the same. With tilt, you focus...then tilt, then re-focus and often then tilt a bit more and re-focus until your OCD gets a complete work out.
I've never had any issues with the corner sharpness of a TS-e 17L unshifted and it's not a lens that generally gets used wide open when shifted. It's designed for architecture and that generally needs stopping down for DOF.
 
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I wonder why they will have them coming out with a high Rez camera, whatever that will be? Isn’t 45MP enough for these? They have a wider field of view, you can’t use all the rez in one photo.

somehow it seems by the announcement that these will have crazy high Rez if they are intro’d with a high Rez body. Unless the intro together is just coincidence, if these have been delayed for some reason, for example. We know that’s been happening.
I may be misunderstanding your comment (forgive me if that's so!), but I think the benefit of a tilt shift being paired with a higher resolution camera is not necessarily that the glass is sharp enough to use with such high resolution, but rather a tilt shift lens gives you some other options to manage loss of sharpness caused by diffraction.

Images produced by a very high resolution sensor may start losing sharpness at commonly used apertures (when images are viewed at full size). As the sensor resolution goes up, diffraction may become more visible at lower apertures when images are viewed at full size. For instance, according to a photopills calculator, a 100MP sensor may have some visual diffraction at f/5.6. Now, if you're losing sharpness from f/5.6 and upwards, it may be difficult to keep some scenes with more depth in sharp focus without going to a higher aperture or focus stacking. A tilt shift lens, however, can let you change the plane of focus to some degree to enable more of the scene to be in focus at a lower aperture.

That's based on my very limited (and likely flawed) understanding of tilt shift lenses, but to my understanding you may need a tilt shift to get all the sharpness that a very high resolution sensor can deliver.
 
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It's fun to see history repeat (or at least rhyme) on this forum. Anyone else remember the good old days of some begging for a "high megapixel monster" and the debates of whether it was necessary or overkill? Then the 5DS and 5DSR came out with 50MP. Canon listened (though didn't get much credit from some forum dwellers). Now we have a prosumer R5 shooting 45MP at up to 20FPS with vastly better dynamic range, low light performance and incredible eye-detect AF...and we're once again looking forward in anticipation of a "high megapixel" body -- the goal posts have just shifted to 80-100MP now. :p
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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It's fun to see history repeat (or at least rhyme) on this forum. Anyone else remember the good old days of some begging for a "high megapixel monster" and the debates of whether it was necessary or overkill? Then the 5DS and 5DSR came out with 50MP. Canon listened (though didn't get much credit from some forum dwellers). Now we have a prosumer R5 shooting 45MP at up to 20FPS with vastly better dynamic range, low light performance and incredible eye-detect AF...and we're once again looking forward in anticipation of a "high megapixel" body -- the goal posts have just shifted to 80-100MP now. :p
Indeed. And we're still hearing the misguided refrain of more MP aren't useful because 'you can't use all the resolution', because of the lens diffraction limit, etc., which just indicates that as the goalposts continue to move, some people still don't understand the basic rules of the game.
 
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Realistically, 14mm would be too wide for most of my needs but I’m defintely looking forward to an updated 24mm. The 24mm TS-E II does not match the standards set by the newer 50mm, 90mm and 135mm TS-E lenses, so hopefully a new one will have substantially better resolution. Combined with AF, it should make for a killer walk around street photography lens for architecture enthusiasts...

It‘d also be really nice if they could also make it with a wider maximum aperture, such as f/2... then maybe I could finally stop lamenting the fuji kit I had with the 16mm f/1.4 (24 equivalent) that was stolen.
 
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unfocused

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Tell that to your favorite large vendor that doesn't want to overstock camera equipment that very few people purchase. The new norm. Seller vs wholesale buyer. The large vendors are not willing to purchase niche items in huge quantities and they sit in warehouses after the initial 3 months. After the initial preorders sales numbers level off to relatively nothing. Alternative, purchase from your local and small retailer.
While the R5, R6, 100-500 zoom, batteries for the R5&6, EF adapters for the R system, battery grips for the R5&6, 800 f11, 600 f11, 70-200 2.8 zoom, etc. might be considered "niche" items in the sense that the entire R system is a niche product, none of them are at risk of sitting in warehouses.
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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Realistically, 14mm would be too wide for most of my needs but I’m defintely looking forward to an updated 24mm. The 24mm TS-E II does not match the standards set by the newer 50mm, 90mm and 135mm TS-E lenses, so hopefully a new one will have substantially better resolution. Combined with AF, it should make for a killer walk around street photography lens for architecture enthusiasts...

It‘d also be really nice if they could also make it with a wider maximum aperture, such as f/2... then maybe I could finally stop lamenting the fuji kit I had with the 16mm f/1.4 (24 equivalent) that was stolen.
Don't hold your breath on a fast-aperture TS lens. They're 'slow' because it's hard to correct aberrations at wide apertures in wide lenses, and it gets even harder with bigger image circles (FF is harder than APS-C, and a FF TS lens has an image circle large enough to cover a MF (e.g. Hasselblad, Phase One) sensor.
 
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I realy hope the high MP R camera will be as good in video as the R5 is.
I would love to have more MP for product and architecture photography. But I also need 2 capable video cameras - so buying 2x the same camera would be a blessing. Its so awesome to never think about which camera to grab, for wedding and shootings on location its perfect. Always matching settings and image quality, always the same handling and fitting accessories =)
 
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Don't hold your breath on a fast-aperture TS lens. They're 'slow' because it's hard to correct aberrations at wide apertures in wide lenses, and it gets even harder with bigger image circles (FF is harder than APS-C, and a FF TS lens has an image circle large enough to cover a MF (e.g. Hasselblad, Phase One) sensor.
Absolutely, wide shift lenses are mainly designed for architecture, where absolute sharpness is required from corner to corner with as little distortion as possible. They are usually used stopped down a lot for depth of field, so a 24mm f1.4 TS makes little sense. A brighter (f2) 50mm or 90mm TS could be more interesting for creative portraiture or studio photography (food).

As an architecture photographer, my 17mm, 24mm, and 45mm are always used between f11 and f16 on a sturdy tripod. I almost never use the tilt, unless I must picture a flat surface from an angle and cannot achieve sharpness with DOF. The AF on wide angle TS-E lenses is not a welcome addition IMO. When you work on a tripod you need a good MANUAL focus, that is the exact contrary of what a focus by wire lens is offering. The manual focus on the TS-E lenses is decent, but is a real step back from real manual lenses like my Contax Distagon 35mm Shift that I still use for work. I fear that focus by wire TS-E AF lenses will lower the quality of manual focus one step further.
 
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It's fun to see history repeat (or at least rhyme) on this forum. Anyone else remember the good old days of some begging for a "high megapixel monster" and the debates of whether it was necessary or overkill? Then the 5DS and 5DSR came out with 50MP. Canon listened (though didn't get much credit from some forum dwellers). Now we have a prosumer R5 shooting 45MP at up to 20FPS with vastly better dynamic range, low light performance and incredible eye-detect AF...and we're once again looking forward in anticipation of a "high megapixel" body -- the goal posts have just shifted to 80-100MP now. :p
I remember some folks (not on this forum) saying that the resolution of the original 5D is allready more than enough and that 1Ds mk II is an overkill and that they won't buy a 5D Mk II if it comes with a sensor over 16MP because it's gonna produce images with way too much noise and lousy IQ.
 
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Huh? Sorry, that statement makes no sense to me.
Of course it makes sense. These will be higher rez than the old lenses. The body will be a high Rez body. But unless these lenses deliver stupendous rez, the problem with digital vs. lens rez will continue. The body being capable of higher rez than the lens.
 
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Of course it makes sense. These will be higher rez than the old lenses. The body will be a high Rez body. But unless these lenses deliver stupendous rez, the problem with digital vs. lens rez will continue. The body being capable of higher rez than the lens.
But that simply isn't how system resolution works. And this continued complete misunderstanding seems to be perpetuating...

This isn't definitive but is a reasonable basic outline of the maths

Reposted yet again/again/again:-

System resolution can be broadly shorthanded down to this equation, it isn't perfect but close enough.

tsr = 1/sqrt((1/lsr) ² + (1/ssr) ² )

Where tsr is total system resolution, lsr is lens spatial resolution, and ssr is sensor spatial resolution.

So if, for example, we have a sensor that can resolve 100 lppmm, and a lens that can resolve 100 lppmm we get this

1/sqrt((1/100) ² + (1/100) ² ) = tsr of 71 lppmm

Leave the same lens on, good or bad, and double the sensor resolution to 200 lppmm

1/sqrt((1/100) ² + (1/200) ² ) = tsr of 89 lppmm

You will notice that the system resolution, even in this simplified form, can never resolve 100% of the lowest performing portion of that system, so if a 24MP sensor is returning 80% of the potential of a lens then a 50MP sensor might return 90%, how useful that is in real life is a moot point, but it does illustrate that even the most modest lens will show increased resolution when put in front of a higher resolving sensor.


Here is a much more in depth way of calculating optical system resolution. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_resolution
 
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Of course it makes sense. These will be higher rez than the old lenses. The body will be a high Rez body. But unless these lenses deliver stupendous rez, the problem with digital vs. lens rez will continue. The body being capable of higher rez than the lens.
I suggest you do some research on what determines the resolution of optical systems (edit: start with PBD's post above!). With modern cameras and lenses, there is no such thing as 'empty resolution', increased sensor resolution always results in increased system resolution, even of the increase is not linear. Then you threw in, 'they have a wider FoV' like that was an explanation.

The same is not true for some of the optical systems I work with; for example, on a microscope with a standard Zeiss upright research scope optical train, a 100x NA=1.4 oil-immersion microscope objective, even when paired with a NA=1.4 oil-top condenser, can be fully resolved by a sVGA-resolution image sensor when imaging samples with visible light wavelengths. Anything above 800x600 is truly empty resolution. Incidentally, in the case of microscope objectives FoV does matter – while a 100x objective only needs 0.5 MP to fully resolve it, a 1.25x objective needs ~2.5MP to fully resolve the image (which is why the Zeiss microscope cameras costing far more than a Canon 1-series use low-MP 1/3" CCD sensors).
 
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It will be interesting to see how autofocus would work on a seriously tilted lens. With the current 24mm and 17mm, I used the manual focus to get something focused, and then adjusted the tilt to get everything else I wanted in focus. If you motorized the tilt and had serious computing power in the camera, that could work. Or at the other extreme, it might just work as autofocus in situations with little or no tilt, just so they could say it was autofocus for advertising purposes.

Maybe some time this will bring the TS-E models down to my price range.
Maybe I see things a little bit too simplified: Put your AF in Servo Mode and the AF is trying to get and keep focus. Tilting is basically* just the "same" thing like changing the distance for the AF acquisition routine of the camera: Bring it in focus again.
A tilt adapter for EF lenses should work without any software adaptions on an R series (or M series) camera (and not to extreme tilting should work with the standard image cycle).

EDIT: * basically inserted, I now that it isn't exactly the same like changing the distance ...
 
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