Ultimate giclée lens?

[dr croubie]

I know a shade-tree mechanic who could fabricate something like that and wouldn't charge more than a Benjamin for it, maybe even half that.

Count the number of ticks on the lens indicating mm of shift, and move the clamp an equal number of ticks the opposite direction. Done and done. Only potentially problematic if you want to do a vertical panorama, but you can use the dropout in your ballhead -- and who does vertical shift panoramas, anyway?

Well yeah, it's expensive. Hell, I've even just bought Medium Format lenses (like Zeiss Flektogon 50mm f/4.0 for Pentacon Six), hacked up a $10 chinese-ebay tripod clamp for some other lens, and stuck it on a $100 P6-EF shift-adapter.

And measuring and sliding also works, especially for landscape, i've done that too (Sunwayfoto make a nice sliding rail with measurements). But I wouldn't do it for macro or even A3-sized repro-work, you'll never get it *exactly* right, and errors are magnified ridiculously at short distances.