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24mm Tilt Shift lens on D30

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Andrew Grant27981

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Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
 
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
I use the TS-E 45mm all of the time for macro mushroom shots, (see my
web page) and it works great. I have waited for this type of lens
technoligy all of my life in the 35mm format. The results are astounding.

Mark Hilliard, N2HHR
http://www.orneveien.org/n2hhr
The Secret World of Mushrooms
 
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Can't help you with the 24, but I like my 90 so much I'll be replacing
my Macro 50 with the TS-E45. The 90 is a tad long on the D30
though, as can be seen in this example:



Both glass fishes at 35 degrees to the camera. Focal plane along
foreground fish, lens stopped down to f/8 to make background
fish discernible. The long focal length makes the image a bit
compressed though. Some shift might have helped, but mine's at
right-angles but can be modified to same-angles movement. (I
think all three TS-E's can have their shift boxes opened and rotated.
Looks simple; just four screws.)

Maximum tilt is about 35 degrees and doesn't appreciably affect
metering or cause vignetting on the D30. Shifting confuses the
meter, so with flash an external flashmeter is recommended.
For non-flash, just meter off something middle gray and lock it in
M mode. With same-angles movement, I suspect vignetting is
likely going to limit movement. Closest focus will fill the frame with
about a 3x5" scene and at near distances focus significantly affects
magnification. Haven't tried the 90 with tubes or a tele extender.

Mechanical quality is excellent on the 90. It's an all-metal, smooth
focus lens. Fairly heavy, but nothing to prevent hand holding. The
gear mechanisms can be locked to avoid damage from dings and
casual handling.
 
Andrew, you might want to check-out Luminous Landscape, ...I believe Michael Reichmann uses/discusses the 24mm T/S.

HTH, Larry
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
 
He does but he hasn't mentioned using the lens with the D30.
lhsmith said:
HTH, Larry
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Hi Andrew,

Seems to me that this quote doesn't miss the D-30 very far :-) ..."I regard this lens as a must for anyone serious about doing landscape photography in 35mm."
Andrew Grant said:
lhsmith said:
HTH, Larry
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Andrew:

I haven't used your D30/24TS combination, but I have used a Nikon D1 with a 28mm PC lens to make two-shot panoramas of the sort you are interested in. I assume that the Canon lens is more versatile than the Nikon, so you shouldn't have any problem. Stitching software isn't necessary because the two images will mate perfectly. Just make sure there is a reasonable amount of overlap, and feather the edge of one of the images by 20 pixels or more when you paste it onto the other image in Photoshop.

I thought that two-shot panoramas were great until I mastered Panorama Tools and got into multi-row mosaics of up to 40 images. For this work I use a 50mm f/1.8 lens most of the time because it is extremely sharp and has zero distortion. You do need a special tripod head, however, which is not required in the shift lens technique.

Brian
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
 
Andrew,

I found these in my "favorites" from my own interest in the T/S lenses, ...you may find them interesting:

Here is a quote from the first thread ---

Posted August 30, 2001 12:52 PM -----------------------------------------------------------------------

I bought the 24mm version giving me a 35mm on the D30. For architecture, I think this works great. I'm quite happy with it and totally tickled with the results when I see what I have been missing all these years.

links:

http://www.photo.net/photo/canon/tilt-shift

http://www.robgalbraith.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=8&t=001185

Larry
Larry H. Smith said:
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
I took some shots for this purpose but haven't stitched them yet. (I shot 2,700 images on a vacation to Spain and haven't had a chance to "process" most of them yet.) The lens works just fine on the D30 and is a real treat to use for architectural photography.

For panoramas, on a D30, you should be able to get almost twice the image width and more than twice the height. (Assuming standard orientation.) Trying to expand the field of view for both height and width on one shot will be tricky, but is probably doable by rotating the lens to non-90-degree angles and doing more work in the stitch.

-Z-
 
Thanks Brian, that is the information I was interested in. I like the idea of locking the tripod and using a shift lens which I suspected should make the stitching trivial as well as making the stitched image look like a single shot image. Some stitched shots look a litlle strange.

I have experimented a bit with panoramas without a shift lens and found the stitching troublesome. I do not have a special tripod head. I do have a 50/1.4 though. Exposure can also be problematic.

Another thing that occured to me was using an shift lens and a series of shots with varied exposure to simulate an graduated desnisty filter for dealing with large contrast ranges between the sky and the gound.

BTW how much can you actually shift with these lenses. Does the resulting image have the resolution of 1.5 or almost 2 frames.
brian said:
I thought that two-shot panoramas were great until I mastered
Panorama Tools and got into multi-row mosaics of up to 40 images.
For this work I use a 50mm f/1.8 lens most of the time because it
is extremely sharp and has zero distortion. You do need a special
tripod head, however, which is not required in the shift lens
technique.

Brian
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
I emailed Micheal, who told me he had used his Tilt Shift lens on his D30 quite successfully but had not used it for panorama work. I am interested in the lens as a means to create multishot panoramas that can be easily spliced with no special stitching software.
lhsmith said:
Seems to me that this quote doesn't miss the D-30 very far :-)
..."I regard this lens as a must for anyone serious about doing
landscape photography in 35mm."
Andrew Grant said:
lhsmith said:
HTH, Larry
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Andrew Grant said:
BTW how much can you actually shift with these lenses. Does the
resulting image have the resolution of 1.5 or almost 2 frames.
Click to expand...
Andrew,

The degree-of-shift is discussed in some detail at one of the (2nd, I believe) links I sent you in one of my posts above.
(I don't know if you saw it or not, ...you didn't respoind to it.)

HTH, Larry
 
I did see those links, thanks for the info. I have also seen some others. One problem is that all the information I have seen assumes a 35mm fullframe.

I am interested in the implications for the D30's cropped frame. vignetting should not be a problem, but I assume the total imaging area available will be lower.
lhsmith said:
Andrew Grant said:
BTW how much can you actually shift with these lenses. Does the
resulting image have the resolution of 1.5 or almost 2 frames.
Click to expand...
Andrew,

The degree-of-shift is discussed in some detail at one of the (2nd,
I believe) links I sent you in one of my posts above.
(I don't know if you saw it or not, ...you didn't respoind to it.)

HTH, Larry
Click to expand...
 
Jan,

My favorite lens too. It seems very sharp.

BC
Jan Brittenson said:
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Can't help you with the 24, but I like my 90 so much I'll be replacing
my Macro 50 with the TS-E45. The 90 is a tad long on the D30
though, as can be seen in this example:



Both glass fishes at 35 degrees to the camera. Focal plane along
foreground fish, lens stopped down to f/8 to make background
fish discernible. The long focal length makes the image a bit
compressed though. Some shift might have helped, but mine's at
right-angles but can be modified to same-angles movement. (I
think all three TS-E's can have their shift boxes opened and rotated.
Looks simple; just four screws.)

Maximum tilt is about 35 degrees and doesn't appreciably affect
metering or cause vignetting on the D30. Shifting confuses the
meter, so with flash an external flashmeter is recommended.
For non-flash, just meter off something middle gray and lock it in
M mode. With same-angles movement, I suspect vignetting is
likely going to limit movement. Closest focus will fill the frame
with
about a 3x5" scene and at near distances focus significantly affects
magnification. Haven't tried the 90 with tubes or a tele extender.

Mechanical quality is excellent on the 90. It's an all-metal, smooth
focus lens. Fairly heavy, but nothing to prevent hand holding. The
gear mechanisms can be locked to avoid damage from dings and
casual handling.
Click to expand...
 
Mark:

There are remarkable images!

Are you a mycologist? Would you share more about HOW you utilize this lens in obtaining these shots?

THANKS!

Jack Winberg
Mark Hilliard said:
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
I use the TS-E 45mm all of the time for macro mushroom shots, (see my
web page) and it works great. I have waited for this type of lens
technoligy all of my life in the 35mm format. The results are
astounding.

Mark Hilliard, N2HHR
http://www.orneveien.org/n2hhr
The Secret World of Mushrooms
Click to expand...
 
Andrew:

The Nikon 28mm lens that I use has a maximum shift of about + -11mm, which is nearly enough to double a horizontal D1 frame. In practice I never come close to this zero overlap condition because it makes joining the images more difficult. The Canon shift lenses have more shift, I think, and the D30 imager is slightly smaller, so you should never be lacking for shift capability.

With regard to stitching images shot with a normal lens, it is possible to do it almost perfectly, with an average error of well under a pixel. Certainly good enough to make the seams completely undetectable even if you know where to look. If you want to get into really high resolution images, this is the route you would need to take. With the right equipment, you can take an 18-shot (3 rows, 6 columns) mosaic in only about 30 seconds, which is not much longer than it takes to shoot a 2-shot panorama with a shift lens. The stitching certainly takes some work, but the results are just amazing.

Brian
Andrew Grant said:
I have experimented a bit with panoramas without a shift lens and
found the stitching troublesome. I do not have a special tripod
head. I do have a 50/1.4 though. Exposure can also be problematic.

Another thing that occured to me was using an shift lens and a
series of shots with varied exposure to simulate an graduated
desnisty filter for dealing with large contrast ranges between the
sky and the gound.

BTW how much can you actually shift with these lenses. Does the
resulting image have the resolution of 1.5 or almost 2 frames.
brian said:
I thought that two-shot panoramas were great until I mastered
Panorama Tools and got into multi-row mosaics of up to 40 images.
For this work I use a 50mm f/1.8 lens most of the time because it
is extremely sharp and has zero distortion. You do need a special
tripod head, however, which is not required in the shift lens
technique.

Brian
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Jack Winberg said:
There are remarkable images!

Are you a mycologist? Would you share more about HOW you utilize
this lens in obtaining these shots?

THANKS!

Jack Winberg
Click to expand...
No, I am an advanced hobbist and photographer who happened onto it at

the right time and place. I have a grant from the state to study a local island and catalog the mushrooms growing there. I have published many times in many forums including MTV and several software products.

I normally will use a sigma 50mm macro or my Canon 28-105mm (which has the clearest and sharpest glass) for most of my images. For the Canon I
add a 500D and some extension tubes to achieve the image I want. For
some of my subjects the tilt/shift is the ONLY way to capture them. I

allways use the 500D with it and will from time to time add some extension. The key is to visualize the finished image that you want before you take the shot, then make it happen. Using the t/s lens centered I will focus on the CLOSEST point of the subject usually with the aid if the Canon angle adapter C. I will then measure the angle of the focus plane that I wish to capture (visualize a mushroom with a round cap and stem) from the closest point to the farthest point and set the T/S lens tilt adjustment to match as closely as possible. Recompose and shoot being carefull not to change the subject distance. Keeping in mind that this is macro work and the DOF is VERY narrow, I usually will shoot at f/22 even with the T/S. I am almost always in the dark woods so I attach a Canon 14 EX ring flash to the front of the T/S-500D as well set to a ratio of 1:8. Even so my exposures usually are over a second since I dial in -1ev flash compensation so that I can capture some background as well.

All in all I will spend between 1/2 and 1 hour on each shot. I am getting ready to do a major web page update with my latest photos this week with more and better examples of the T/S in work. I hope to purchase a
90mm version soon, but the cost as you know is a major impact.

Mark Hilliard, N2HHR
http://www.orneveien.org/n2hhr
The Secret World of Mushrooms
 
Mark:

Thanks so much for your explication.

I also do mushroom macros, and your use of the tilt/shift lens is such an excellent solution to the focal plane difficulties.

Now to confess my ignorance, just WHAT is the a "500D" that you mention?

Thanks again.... Jack Winberg
Mark Hilliard said:
Jack Winberg said:
There are remarkable images!

Are you a mycologist? Would you share more about HOW you utilize
this lens in obtaining these shots?

THANKS!

Jack Winberg
Click to expand...
No, I am an advanced hobbist and photographer who happened onto it at
the right time and place. I have a grant from the state to study a
local island and catalog the mushrooms growing there. I have
published many times in many forums including MTV and several
software products.

I normally will use a sigma 50mm macro or my Canon 28-105mm (which
has the clearest and sharpest glass) for most of my images. For
the Canon I
add a 500D and some extension tubes to achieve the image I want. For
some of my subjects the tilt/shift is the ONLY way to capture them. I
allways use the 500D with it and will from time to time add some
extension. The key is to visualize the finished image that you want
before you take the shot, then make it happen. Using the t/s lens
centered I will focus on the CLOSEST point of the subject usually
with the aid if the Canon angle adapter C. I will then measure the
angle of the focus plane that I wish to capture (visualize a
mushroom with a round cap and stem) from the closest point to the
farthest point and set the T/S lens tilt adjustment to match as
closely as possible. Recompose and shoot being carefull not to
change the subject distance. Keeping in mind that this is macro
work and the DOF is VERY narrow, I usually will shoot at f/22 even
with the T/S. I am almost always in the dark woods so I attach a
Canon 14 EX ring flash to the front of the T/S-500D as well set to
a ratio of 1:8. Even so my exposures usually are over a second
since I dial in -1ev flash compensation so that I can capture some
background as well.

All in all I will spend between 1/2 and 1 hour on each shot. I am
getting ready to do a major web page update with my latest photos
this week with more and better examples of the T/S in work. I hope
to purchase a
90mm version soon, but the cost as you know is a major impact.

Mark Hilliard, N2HHR
http://www.orneveien.org/n2hhr
The Secret World of Mushrooms
Click to expand...
 
FYI: Someone on the robgalbraith board linked to below was complaining about the quality of the TS/E 45.
lhsmith said:
I found these in my "favorites" from my own interest in the T/S
lenses, ...you may find them interesting:

Here is a quote from the first thread ---

Posted August 30, 2001 12:52 PM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I bought the 24mm version giving me a 35mm on the D30. For
architecture, I think this works great. I'm quite happy with it and
totally tickled with the results when I see what I have been
missing all these years.

links:

http://www.photo.net/photo/canon/tilt-shift

http://www.robgalbraith.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=8&t=001185

Larry
Larry H. Smith said:
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Hi Stanley,

Yes, that is true. (for those interested in reading it, the poster's name was Gerd Kestermann)

My own interest is in the 24mm lens, ...but as a point-of-information, I would like to hear more comments on the 45/90.

I think it is wise to take "one-sample" reports with a bit of salt. Certainly worth taking note-of though!

Thanks,

Larry
Stanley said:
lhsmith said:
I found these in my "favorites" from my own interest in the T/S
lenses, ...you may find them interesting:

Here is a quote from the first thread ---

Posted August 30, 2001 12:52 PM
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I bought the 24mm version giving me a 35mm on the D30. For
architecture, I think this works great. I'm quite happy with it and
totally tickled with the results when I see what I have been
missing all these years.

links:

http://www.photo.net/photo/canon/tilt-shift

http://www.robgalbraith.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=8&t=001185

Larry
Stanley62456 said:
Andrew Grant said:
Has anyone used this lens on a D30. I am interested in this lens
for several reasons. One is to use in conjunction with
Photostitching software to create panoramas or high resolution wide
angle shots. Shifting the lens should create images that are easier
to stitch together. Has anyone done this.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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