24mm PC-E tilt shift lens

Just when I thought my bag was full of everything I needed I somehow ended up reading about T&S lenses. Whilst I'm not too interested in the world of miniature effects, the perspective control and endless DOF looks pretty cool.

I'm thinking of hiring one in a couple of weeks to see how I get on with one as it requires a little discipline. I would probably wait until next February if I decided to get one as that's my birthday and I'm fifty so my wife wants to get me something nice.

I also understand that I could get the Samyang or the Nikkor, the latter being a lot more expensive.

Has anyone got or used a T&S lens?


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Geoffc said:

I also understand that I could get the Samyang or the Nikkor, the latter being a lot more expensive.

Has anyone got or used a T&S lens?

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I have no direct experience but my buddy has one and from the structural examples that he took, they are pretty sharp. I wish Nikon comes up with something wider, similar to what Canon offers.

This is more of a specialty lens but I am also fed up in taking pictures of houses or structures that are not aligned vertically.

Yes, tilt-shift lenses are a must have for photographing architechure and interior stuff. I've only used the Canon version. I'm about to try the Nikon version - will rent it from Borrowlenses.com

Here are some done for a real estate agent. It's the Canon 24mm tilt-shift and HDR processed by Enfuse plug-in in Lightroom.

Tilt shift lens are good for product photography too. Like shooting a cereal box. They are all manual focus as well.

I've only used the 85mm PC-E in class though.

I wonder how much we need tilt-shift lenses nowadays, when we have digital cameras and photoshop. Distortion and converging lines can be easily corrected in post processing, like in this example:

Before:


After:


How much more can a tilt-shift lens do, in comparison to post-processing? When a tall building is photographed at a high angle and converging lines are parallelised in post-processing, it looks really weird, just because distances and angles are different at different parts of the building. I don't suppose a tilt-shift lens can really help in such an extreme case, though I don't have any personal experience.

In less extreme cases, is there any advantage of using a tilt-shift lens?

The tilt-shift lens is very important for interior real-estate photos for accuracy reason. Correction using photoshop is not only tedious as there's no way to batch process but also the sense of size and proportionality may be lost. When I shoot real estate interiors, it's usually done tether and my client (usually the listing agent) will be watching on my 15" laptop to make sure I don't make the photo of the room lose it's proportion. The most challenging is hallways where post-production corrections tends to make them look longer than they are. Also, compared to "tilt", doing "shift" correction is a hit and miss proposition in photoshop or Lightroom. In many cases (actually most), I won't be able to set up the camera in the center at the end of the hallway - usually because of architectural constrain or some piece of immovable furniture in the way, I'll have to set the camera up off center. The shift lens can make the photo look like i took it from the center.

Interesting. Thank you, Yauman, for this explanation. I did not think about sense of size and proportion at all. Here are a few pictures of our office space I took, to show them to friends and colleagues. I used my Tokina 11-16 and I tried to keep the camera horizontal (i.e. not facing up or down), so the lines are not converging too much. I corrected each image in Photoshop. ACR is pretty good at it, and when the lines are pronounced, you just just click one button (automatic verticals) to make them straight. I'm not sure if batch processing is possible.

However, I did not take sense of size and proportion into account in these pictures. I have no idea if they are good or bad from a point of view of an estate agent. I just did them for fun!

yauman said:

Yes, tilt-shift lenses are a must have for photographing architechure and interior stuff. I've only used the Canon version. I'm about to try the Nikon version - will rent it from Borrowlenses.com

Here are some done for a real estate agent. It's the Canon 24mm tilt-shift and HDR processed by Enfuse plug-in in Lightroom.

Click to expand...

Besides the expense, these photos show why I've never bought one - 24mm isn't wide enough for interior real estate photos. In my business I use a 12-24mm and even 12mm on a D600 can be not quite wide enough. Lots of older houses have very small rooms. Sure, the distortion can be bad on any UWA lens, but it's fixable in PS. Here's an example from a shoot last weekend

Felisek said:

Interesting. Thank you, Yauman, for this explanation. I did not think about sense of size and proportion at all. Here are a few pictures of our office space I took, to show them to friends and colleagues. I used my Tokina 11-16 and I tried to keep the camera horizontal (i.e. not facing up or down), so the lines are not converging too much. I corrected each image in Photoshop. ACR is pretty good at it, and when the lines are pronounced, you just just click one button (automatic verticals) to make them straight. I'm not sure if batch processing is possible.

However, I did not take sense of size and proportion into account in these pictures. I have no idea if they are good or bad from a point of view of an estate agent. I just did them for fun!

Click to expand...

Interesting Subject. Nice offices by the way.

Lightroom has the same lens correction algorithm as Photoshop ACR but I have not found a way to do a batch sync correctly - I guess geometric distortion is so individualized for each photo it has to be done individually.

After correction, small rooms will look like they are bigger - yes the vertical lines are all vertical but the perspective (vanishing point lines) become more pronounced, thus distance emphasized, thus making hallways look longer and room bigger.

As for 24mm not being wide enough, I don't know - never had a problem with it but then I'm shooting for $5m to $15m homes in California. Look at these - all interior shots are done with 24mm tilt-shift. I may rent a 17mm from Borrowlenses.com try out next.

Wolfeye said:

Besides the expense, these photos show why I've never bought one - 24mm isn't wide enough for interior real estate photos. In my business I use a 12-24mm and even 12mm on a D600 can be not quite wide enough. Lots of older houses have very small rooms. Sure, the distortion can be bad on any UWA lens, but it's fixable in PS. Here's an example from a shoot last weekendView attachment 108295

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Is the room in the picture really as long as it looks in the image? I've taken pictures in my house with an Tokina 11-16 or even a 10.5 fisheye. The result tends to be that the rooms look much bigger than they actually are. It makes my bathroom look like a ballroom.

Just to add some clarity to my original post, I would be interested in landscape and external architecture. I would like the large depth of field and sharp corners as the pixels haven't been stretched in Lightroom.


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Well, as it's hard for me to see it as anything but what the photo shows, so it's more about your perception. I don't think the image shows anything but the room as the lens and sensor captured it. It's not a huge room nor a small room nor does this image make it appear "long" to me. It's just a room shot with a wide angle lens.

Wolfeye said:

Well, as it's hard for me to see it as anything but what the photo shows, so it's more about your perception. I don't think the image shows anything but the room as the lens and sensor captured it. It's not a huge room nor a small room nor does this image make it appear "long" to me. It's just a room shot with a wide angle lens.

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If that's how it would look if I walked in the room that's fair enough, I just know what an 11mm DX or 16mm FX does to my rooms. I'm not suggesting a T&S is the answer to that problem, although a 24mm on FX is like 16mm on DX so it's reasonably wide. I think Canon do a 17mm FX T&S lens which would achieve the field of view you need, but it would involve the shame of shooting Canon.


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I tried the 24mm a while back and was very impressed... so much so that just this morning I ordered both the 24mm and the 45mm from a dealer in Sydney... now comes the wait for the package to arrive....
and as I had ordered both the PC lenses the dealer gave me a very good deal on a SB 910 flash... so that's enough NAS for one day.... I'm starting to sound like my good buddy Bill16.. heh heh
cheers

They're here....