Diagonal tilt - Ts-e lenses. Issue with panorama shift?

Martin Erik Andersen wrote:

I have now tried the 45° stitch direction of five shots in a cross pattern. But after cropping with surprisingly little gain in the final panorama format compared to a single shot. Actually surprisingly next to nothing:

I could probably have been more precise in getting the 45° correct (the clicks at shift axis being at 30° and 60°), and then having to crop less, but still I suppose not terrible much would have been gained.

A bit better than a 3 shot stitch, but again not much compared to a single non-stitched shot:

As far as I can see getting more of the image circle into play would require a 90° rotation of the shifting direction, and that would again change the possible tilt focus planes to the opposing 2 possible diagonals. And the additional photos would not be able to stitch into a single photo as the tilted diagonal focus planes would not match.

I sure might be doing something wrong. The 45° degree shift direction for panorama certainly ads to the complexity of it all.

But anyway interesting to make exercises at a primitive test setup – I am getting more familiar with the settings and the possible focus planes, it will be useful when making decisions in real life. Hereby recommended 😊

Martin, I think you used different angles for your crosses and that’s why your images didn’t align properly. I think you also rotated the camera 45 degrees not the lens??

I just tried my idea off my deck and here is the result. I wasn't using a very sturdy tripod so that could be the reason the double diagonal pano didn't meet in the corners. However, as you can see this method very nearly gives you the same width as the 3 shot horizontal pano and is much wider than a single shot. It took me 30 seconds to take all 5 shots so I really don’t think it’s as complicated as you make it out to be.

STEPS:

Step 1: Rotate lens counter clockwise 45 degrees on shift axis

Step 2: Shift lens 12mm down and to the right.

Shot 1: Shift down right

Shift lens back to center.

Shot 2: No shift

Step 3: Shift lens 12mm up to left

Shot 3: Shift Up left

Step 4: Rotate lens clockwise 90 degrees on shift axis

Shot 4: Shift Up right

Step 5: Shift lens 24mm down and to the left (you go from full shift up right to full shift down left)

Shot 5: Shift down left

I didn’t do the tilts and focus stack them but the premise of your original post wasn’t asking the validity of focus stacking a pano with 4 different tilt directions, it was how you could physically manipulate the lens to take those photos assuming you wanted to. You’d have the same issues with focal planes matching up even if you were able to freely rotate the lens 360 degrees on both the shift and tilt axis.