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Some one explain this lens to me in plain english please

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Its a tilt and shift lens.

You can tilt, shift and rotate the plane of focus to compensate for converging lines on a structure or image.

Its a hard concept to understand, but they are a must for serious architectural photography where a wide angle lens gives a distorted view, and the location of the camera emphasises the converging lines of the structure.

Its a specialist lens.
 
Actually, I think it's just a shift/shift lens. But yeah, looks cute for those who have a use for it. I have the original Canon 24mm TS-E and it's a nice lens for specialist jobs.
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Peter Galbavy
 
It's a special lens that CAN give you more DOF [ depth of field ] Probably going to be at least 1200 , maybe for only some cameras and might not have auto focus .
 
tonyjr said:
It's a special lens that CAN give you more DOF [ depth of field ] Probably going to be at least 1200 , maybe for only some cameras and might not have auto focus .
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Its $1890 and B&H list the Canon variant as in stock, and have done for a few weeks. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?ci=274&N=4293344976+4291231926

It is shift only.

There are a 50mm tilt and shift and a 90mm tilt and shift macro due out next year http://www.robertwhite.co.uk/products.asp?PT_ID=784
 
Embarrassed to ask, but how does this lens work, not a massive technical response I'm after, but once its on the camera what does it do? From reading the gobbly gook at Shutterbug, I didn't think it was a tilt & shift.
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An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
 
In more layman's terms, think of it as a lens with a wider field of view available than the focal length indicates, which you get to choose which portion of the view the camera sensor will see. You photograph the same angular field of view, but you can position it it anywhere within a larger field of view.

It is kind of in accurate to say that it corrects for perspective distortion. With a tall building, for example, it allows you to shoot more straight on and then shift your field of view up so that less of the building is cut off.
rsn48 said:
Embarrassed to ask, but how does this lens work, not a massive technical response I'm after, but once its on the camera what does it do? From reading the gobbly gook at Shutterbug, I didn't think it was a tilt & shift.
--
An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Click to expand...
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http://www.tedwolfephotography.com
 
rsn48 said:
Embarrassed to ask, but how does this lens work, not a massive technical response I'm after, but once its on the camera what does it do? From reading the gobbly gook at Shutterbug, I didn't think it was a tilt & shift.
--
An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Click to expand...
here's how tilt works:

your focus point is not a single point, it's a plane. the plane is parallel with the sensor plane. when you focus on an object 10 feet away from the sensor, EVERYTHING that is 10 feet away will be in focus. so let's say you have three people, standing side by side. all 3 people are 10' away from the camera. if you focus on one, you are focused on all 3.

what a tilt-axis lens does is it tilts the focal plane. so instead of being parallel with the sensor, it is now out of line. the angle of the tilt is variable by the tilt mechanism on the lens.

but now you can imagine 3 people standing side by side, 10' away from you. if you tilt the plane left-to-right, you can make it so that only one of these three people is in focus. OR if you tilt it up-and-down you can make it so their heads are in focus and their bodies are not (and vice versa). this is difficult to explain without a sketch.

another scenario might involve three people who are lined up diagonally. the one on the left is 8 feet away, the one in the middle is 10 feet away, and the one on the right is 12 feet away. if you focused on the middle subject, they will be in focus but the other two might not. one is too close, the other is too far away. a tilt-axis lens allows you to tilt the plane of focus so that it intersects the three subjects. a tilt-axis lens allows you to adjust the angle of the tilt, and also allows you to rotate that tilt about the Z-axis (pointing through the lens).

an example of uses for this include product photography. take your camera and aim it down at a desk at a 45 degree angle. if you take a picture, your area of focus will intersect with the desk (because it's parallel to your camera's sensor, remember?). using a tilt-axis lens can make the plane of focus parallel with the table while the camera is still tilted. this allows you to get maximum DOF when shooting objects up close at an angle.

i can't really explain how the shift function works.

NOTE: for the sake of this example i am referring to the area of focus as a plane, but if you want to get extra technical it is more like a box. imagine a plane parallel with your camera sensor, set at the focus distance of your lens. this is the focus point. NOW, if you construct 2 additional planes and place them in front and behind the focal plane this will be your total area of focus, as defined by the DOF. simply put, DOF increases with a smaller aperture, but other factors can affect DOF.
 
Great explanation of Tilt. But to be clear, the OP's question is about a lens that is a shift lens, no tilt feature. Many lenses that have one do both, not this one.
SNGX1327 said:
rsn48 said:
Embarrassed to ask, but how does this lens work, not a massive technical response I'm after, but once its on the camera what does it do? From reading the gobbly gook at Shutterbug, I didn't think it was a tilt & shift.
--
An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Click to expand...
here's how tilt works:

your focus point is not a single point, it's a plane. the plane is parallel with the sensor plane. when you focus on an object 10 feet away from the sensor, EVERYTHING that is 10 feet away will be in focus. so let's say you have three people, standing side by side. all 3 people are 10' away from the camera. if you focus on one, you are focused on all 3.

what a tilt-axis lens does is it tilts the focal plane. so instead of being parallel with the sensor, it is now out of line. the angle of the tilt is variable by the tilt mechanism on the lens.

but now you can imagine 3 people standing side by side, 10' away from you. if you tilt the plane left-to-right, you can make it so that only one of these three people is in focus. OR if you tilt it up-and-down you can make it so their heads are in focus and their bodies are not (and vice versa). this is difficult to explain without a sketch.

another scenario might involve three people who are lined up diagonally. the one on the left is 8 feet away, the one in the middle is 10 feet away, and the one on the right is 12 feet away. if you focused on the middle subject, they will be in focus but the other two might not. one is too close, the other is too far away. a tilt-axis lens allows you to tilt the plane of focus so that it intersects the three subjects. a tilt-axis lens allows you to adjust the angle of the tilt, and also allows you to rotate that tilt about the Z-axis (pointing through the lens).

an example of uses for this include product photography. take your camera and aim it down at a desk at a 45 degree angle. if you take a picture, your area of focus will intersect with the desk (because it's parallel to your camera's sensor, remember?). using a tilt-axis lens can make the plane of focus parallel with the table while the camera is still tilted. this allows you to get maximum DOF when shooting objects up close at an angle.

i can't really explain how the shift function works.

NOTE: for the sake of this example i am referring to the area of focus as a plane, but if you want to get extra technical it is more like a box. imagine a plane parallel with your camera sensor, set at the focus distance of your lens. this is the focus point. NOW, if you construct 2 additional planes and place them in front and behind the focal plane this will be your total area of focus, as defined by the DOF. simply put, DOF increases with a smaller aperture, but other factors can affect DOF.
Click to expand...
--
http://www.tedwolfephotography.com
 
It doesn't really look like anyone has really answered the question yet, so here goes my explanation.

The lens simply has a mechanism to move the lens up and down or diagonal with respect to a centered placement. Perhaps the easiest way to think of it is to imagine what happens to the image. You can illustrate this for yourself by drawing a rectangle representing the camera's sensor on a piece of paper.

Now that the rectangle has been drawn, take a round disk that's bigger than the rectangle and place it over the rectangle. This represents the image circle of the lens.

Any perspective in the image rendered by the lens is symmetrical about the center of this disc. The mechanism on the lens allows you to move the disc with respect to the rectangle. This places the center of symmetry somewhere other than the center of the sensor.

How this affects the final result depends upon the lens design. Does it have barrel distortion? Then the bulge of the barrel will move to a different part of the frame.

Another way to look at it is that the lens images an area larger than the sensor. You will be cropping this image to the center portion of the image if it's not shifted. You will be cropping toward an edge if it is shifted.

If the lens is corrected for barrel distortion (rectilinear), this can help certain subjects that normally would have a distortion appearance have a more natural look. Suppose, for example, we take a picture of the facade of a building. If you use an unshifted lens, the bottom of the building will be much wider than the top. That actually is correct for the perspective if you're shooting from grown level, but you may want the picture of the building to have more parallel vertical lines. You can do this with a shift, shifting the lens higher than the sensor, allowing you to point the camera straight ahead. A rectilinear lens will expand the periphery and reduce the center, so you end up with a subject where the verticals are more parallel.
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Everything this lens can do a tilt/shift lens can do. If you don't need tilt and you otherwise like this lens better ... That's the only reason I can think of to get it over a TS.
rsn48 said:
So why get this lens and not a tilt and shift?

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An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Click to expand...
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Nobody shooting Canon would buy this lens, Canon have the best TS lenses of any brand, sony pentax nikon etc don't have good selection of TS lenses.

Another important use for TS lenses that people forget about which is really useful for product and interior photography is the ability to move the camera below the object you're shooting and then tilt shift it so the camera and tripod it's mounted on don't appear in any reflections.

You can shoot directly in front of a mirror and have the sides of the mirror parrallel but no camera appears in the reflection which is great when shooting bathrooms and really impressses the hell out of clients.

Or if you're shooting reflective things like say lipsticks or bottles or chrome water containers which are circular and shiny you can put you camera below the product and then you don't see the camera in the reflection. This allows you to put a giant light box above the camera to give a nice white reflection in the middle of the product.
 
The simplest way I can think of to explain it is this. When you point your camera up at an angle to take a shot of a building, any parallel vertical lines appear to converge.

What you want to be able to do ideally is keep the plane of the sensor ie the camera body, parallel to the building amd tilt the lens up instead and this is, within limits, exactly what a tilt and shift lens does - the body stays parallel and the lens tilts up.

The same thing happens in the horizontal plane also so with some TS lenses, you can rotate the lens through 90 degrees and correct the horizontal convergence.

The distortion can be corrected in post processing so I don't know how necessary a TS lens is these days. I tend to assume that it's better to use glass and take the best shot one can get in camera but opinions may vary on that.

To the experts out there: is a TS lens all that necessary if the effect can be adjusted in PP?

Trevor
rsn48 said:
Embarrassed to ask, but how does this lens work, not a massive technical response I'm after, but once its on the camera what does it do? From reading the gobbly gook at Shutterbug, I didn't think it was a tilt & shift.
--
An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Click to expand...
 
I think you meant shift when you said tilt.

There are comparisons on the net between software corrections and TS corrections.

Without looking at those comparisons, we can make a simple analysis. If done in software, you will either:
  • Shrink part of the image, thus having a smaller image overall.
  • Expand part of the image, thus losing resolution.
sacentre said:
The simplest way I can think of to explain it is this. When you point your camera up at an angle to take a shot of a building, any parallel vertical lines appear to converge.

What you want to be able to do ideally is keep the plane of the sensor ie the camera body, parallel to the building amd tilt the lens up instead and this is, within limits, exactly what a tilt and shift lens does - the body stays parallel and the lens tilts up.

The same thing happens in the horizontal plane also so with some TS lenses, you can rotate the lens through 90 degrees and correct the horizontal convergence.

The distortion can be corrected in post processing so I don't know how necessary a TS lens is these days. I tend to assume that it's better to use glass and take the best shot one can get in camera but opinions may vary on that.

To the experts out there: is a TS lens all that necessary if the effect can be adjusted in PP?

Trevor
rsn48 said:
Embarrassed to ask, but how does this lens work, not a massive technical response I'm after, but once its on the camera what does it do? From reading the gobbly gook at Shutterbug, I didn't think it was a tilt & shift.
--
An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
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rsn48 said:
So why get this lens and not a tilt and shift?
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cost limitations. canon's TS-E lenses are fairly expensive -- i think the cheapest is over $1,000. however, you can find 3rd party lens solutions for cheaper. i believe the website is araxfoto? for $300 i bought an arax penticon-6 mount medium format lens and a canon tilt-axis adapter. this was a fully manual lens --- manual aperture (which you had to stop down to meter), manual focus. it was attached to a converting mount that tilted and rotated similar to a standard tilt-axis lens. there was no electronic connection to the body (you just set it to Av mode. the camera assumed an f/00 aperture, and metered off available light coming through the lens. when you stopped down the aperture in the lens, the aperture blades closed, creating a darker scene and less light on the meter (similar to holding the DOF preview button). with the aperture constant, the camera set the shutter speed necessary)
 
I think some one in this thread or else where mention this lens was going for $1900, not exactly cheap - and believe me, I love cheap good lenses, considering the Samyang 14mm lens. But the Canon shift and tilt 24mm lens is close to this price.

--
An excellent lens lasts a lifetime, an excellent DSLR, not so long.
 
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