Experience with Samyang/Rokinon tilt shift on Fuji X

Sjeupie wrote:

Rod McD wrote:

Sjeupie wrote:

Rod McD wrote:

Hi,

As Andrew said, It's 24mm on any system. The FOV that this gives you is the same as a 36mm camera on FF - which means that it's not very wide at all on APSC. It would be tight for interiors. Fuji don't offer any TS lenses - a gap in the brand's lens range. Laowa offer a 15/4 macro with limited shift facility - as I understand it, the shift is limited to one direction.

The alternative for Fuji users is the 'adapter' route. You could adapt a FF shift lens, one with an aperture ring to allow exposure control. (I don't know if the smart adapters for Canon will allow you to control the aperture on their EF TS lenses.) You could also adapt a FF non-shift lens and still get some useful movement. The difficulty is not the adapter - they are very good. Once mounted, they're no fiddlier than using any shift lens.

The difficulty with adaptation is getting the right lens in the right FL for APSC. You need a lens with an aperture ring to control exposure and sharp in the outer image area, which you use more when shifted. I used a Nikon AIS 20mmf2.8 with some success, but that still only had the FOV of a 30mm lens on FF - so still not very wide. Legacy lenses wider than 20mm tend to get a bit soft by today's standards. And really ultra-wide lenses like 14-16mm FF lenses from the film era just weren't that sharp. CA's can also be an issue.

The age-old workaround is to crop from a modern WA non-shift lens. You compose with the camera back parallel to the subject and crop off the bottom. You would use a WA lens like the 14mm, 10-24, or any one of the many possible independent brand WA lenses (like perhaps the Viltrox 13/1.4). Yes there is a loss to cropping, but the impact of this will be determined by exactly how much you're cropping off, and your output, ie how big you're printing. High res sensors make this more feasible today than with earlier models.

Still another alternative is to consider SW correction of verticals. I have no expertise in this but I believe it's evolved to be quite sophisticated. There should be a lot of info online.

Hope that helps,

Rod

Hm you confirm my suspicion that there is still no proper TS offer out there.
The tilting adapter route might work…i assume that would need to be paired with a FF wide angle lens to have the bigger projected image circle to allow for the shifting.

Correct

F.e. the xf 8-16mm would have enormous vignetting, if I understand it correctly.

You couldn't use any native XF lens on a TS adapter. The lens has to be one designed for a larger system (as you've observed above) and have a long enough registration distance to allow the adapter to be made to fit between your Fuji body and the adapted lens.

Edit - Native XF lenses like the 8-16, 10-24, 14mm etc, could only be used to achieve aligned verticals by repositioning and cropping the image.

SW corrections of verticals is new to me? What is SW?

SW - sorry - I should have expanded the acronym - Soft Ware. There are programs designed to correct converging verticals. I think DXO offer one.

If you plan to be doing a lot of architectural work, Fuji is less than ideal as a system. If I were doing it for a living, I'd consider a Canon and a bunch of TS lenses, but that's a huge decision and a huge investment.

Regards,

Rod

Yeah I come from a background of adventure photography. So ‘journalism style’ in remote locations for weeks on end (Mongolia for example). A light kit that could be used in the dark with gloves (no fiddling in menu’s and loosing your night vision) was key. Fuji was/is great for that imho.

It then shifted more to extreme sports. Despite the af limits on the xt2 I made it work. Also because I could bring my kit to places I wouldn’t have brought my dslr.

Now trying more and more architecture. And fuji doesn’t shine there. Purely for the lack of the TS.

Might pick up a Canon D5 III or something and a TS lens. Pretty sure that will do. Need to think ahead though also on flash triggers and the likes. Sigh.

Thnx for the help!

No worries. We seem to have followed related paths. I have always hiked and trekked, and still do. Add a little caving, climbing and kayaking. And in doing those you travel, and travel often involves architecture.... And then I worked as a photographer for a couple of years often doing architectural images.  Had the view camera, the whole bit. All a long time ago, and now I'm back to the lightest possible kit for hiking.  But beware, movements get under your skin..... once you've used movements it always feels like there's something missing without them.

Cheers, Rod