ben sensler
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Some photographers might see this post as proof merely that my processing skills need upgrading. They might be among those landscape photographers who think that computer techniques now make tilt-shift lenses unnecessary. In any case, I am offering as evidence some examples that I suspect either would have been completely impossible to achieve without my tilt-shift lenses or, at the very least, would have required a prohibitive amount of time making corrections in the computer had I been using normal lenses. Whether members of this forum agree or disagree with my evidence and tentative conclusions, I hope they will respond with examples of their own that might bear on the issue. I'd prefer not lugging these heavy ts lenses around, so I would welcome being talked out of it.
I offer examples in support of two claims in favor of tilt-shift lenses. The first examples show why tilt is much better than focus stacking to achieve universal focus whenever compositional elements in the scene are in motion. The remaining examples in this post show why being able to shift the lens down is essential for wide angle landscapes.
First some examples of using tilt for moving subjects.
Grass widow flowers with Pentax 645 45-85mm lens at 45mm with maximum tilt on GFX 100s.
This is a typical example of where tilt is required and focus stacking nearly impossible. My Pentax 645 45-85mm lens was set at 45mm and mounted to my Fuji GFX 100s with a Fotodiox tilt-shift adapter fully tilted down at eight degrees. These flowers were tiny and only inches from the ground, were positioned to within a foot of the lens, and were moving in a slight breeze. Getting this one exposure at the instant when everything was motionless required several attempts. That everything was in focus from front to back at that instant was a real advantage with a ts lens. Is there a stacking program that could align and bring into register a focus bracket of all these moving blossoms? Had everything been perfectly still, focus stacking would have resulted in a sharper image over all than this result from such an extreme tilt and the f16 aperture I used, but I was glad to get this image rather than no image.
Water is another subject in the landscape that tends to be in motion, not only ripples in lakes and ponds caused by breezes but ripples and waves produced by currents in streams and rivers. Here are a few examples of what tilt can achieve in just one exposure compared to the results achieved by stacking a focus bracket of several exposures.
Pentax 645 45-85mm at about 65mm on Fuji GFX 100s with Fotodiox tilt-shift adapter. A single exposure with the focus plane positioned via tilt along the plane of the lake's surface.
Fuji GF 35-70mm lens at 65mm. Many focus bracketed exposures stacked later in Photoshop. Not stacked very well in my opinion!
Pentax 645 45-85mm lens at 85mm on GFX 100s with the Fotodiox tilted several degrees to make the focus plane conform to the plane of the lake.
Pentax 645 45-85mm not tilted. Five exposure focus bracket later stacked in Photoshop.
Pentax 645 45-85mm lens at 85mm with Fotodiox adapter on Fuji GFX 100s. This is a crop of an image featuring the texture of the ripples with the lens tilted and focused on the plane of the lake.
Fuji GF 35-70 at 63mm on Fuji GFX 100s. I used auto bracket in the camera and later stacked in Photoshop. This is a mess. Cropped to match the above crop.
Pentax 645 45-85mm at about 70mm on GFX 100s. Fotodiox was tilted so that the focus plane ran along the surface of this fast flowing river.
This is a crop from the above to show the ripple texture. This rendering of detail was achieved along the entire stretch of river.thanks to tilt-shift.
Fuji GF 35-70mm at 70mm on Fuji GFX 100s. Auto focus bracket in camera and then stacked in Photoshop. Again, a mess.
A crop from the above focus stacked image. Attractive or not, a focus stack of moving water is not so much a photo of something as a computer fabrication, sometimes with appeal but usually not.
So much for my evidence that you sometimes need tilt for for moving things. Now we turn to the advantages of being able to shift a lens down. It's often tempting to use wide-angle lenses to get photos with big foregrounds, but aiming the camera down to include those foregrounds rather than shifting the lens down often results in a distorted mess. (Maybe here is where better post-processing know-how would help me?)
Fuji GF 20-35mm on Fuji GFX 100s. Camera was aimed down. .
Canon 17mm tilt-shift on GFX 100s. Shifted down rather than the camera aimed down. Verticals look better to me. Also, shifting down makes the foreground bigger and the background smaller. Good or bad depending on the purpose of the photo. In this case good. Also, a slight tilt of the lens made everything sharp without needing to focus bracket. Tilting just made this photo easier, but shifting down was (for me) what made the image worth taking.
Canon 17mm tilt-shift on Fuji GFX. Lens was unshifted and camera was aimed down in order to emphasize shadows.
Canon 17mm tilt shift lens on Fuji GFX 100s. Camera was level and lens was shifted down. It's so common in landscape photography to want to shift down instead of aim down. For me at least it is less common in landscape photography to want to shift a wide angle up. Shifting down is when tilt-shift is really helpful.
Fuji GF 20-35mm at 20mm on Fuji GFX 100s. Camera was aimed down, absurdly distorting the larch tree. Correcting the distortion in this image might have been within my processing ability, but I decided instead to return to the location a week later with the 17mm tilt-shift.
Canon 17mm tilt-shift lens shifted down instead of aimed down. Same larch tree from the same angle but admittedly a slightly different composition later in the season. I felt better equipped to get what I wanted with the tilt-shift lens.
I offer examples in support of two claims in favor of tilt-shift lenses. The first examples show why tilt is much better than focus stacking to achieve universal focus whenever compositional elements in the scene are in motion. The remaining examples in this post show why being able to shift the lens down is essential for wide angle landscapes.
First some examples of using tilt for moving subjects.
Grass widow flowers with Pentax 645 45-85mm lens at 45mm with maximum tilt on GFX 100s.
This is a typical example of where tilt is required and focus stacking nearly impossible. My Pentax 645 45-85mm lens was set at 45mm and mounted to my Fuji GFX 100s with a Fotodiox tilt-shift adapter fully tilted down at eight degrees. These flowers were tiny and only inches from the ground, were positioned to within a foot of the lens, and were moving in a slight breeze. Getting this one exposure at the instant when everything was motionless required several attempts. That everything was in focus from front to back at that instant was a real advantage with a ts lens. Is there a stacking program that could align and bring into register a focus bracket of all these moving blossoms? Had everything been perfectly still, focus stacking would have resulted in a sharper image over all than this result from such an extreme tilt and the f16 aperture I used, but I was glad to get this image rather than no image.
Water is another subject in the landscape that tends to be in motion, not only ripples in lakes and ponds caused by breezes but ripples and waves produced by currents in streams and rivers. Here are a few examples of what tilt can achieve in just one exposure compared to the results achieved by stacking a focus bracket of several exposures.
Pentax 645 45-85mm at about 65mm on Fuji GFX 100s with Fotodiox tilt-shift adapter. A single exposure with the focus plane positioned via tilt along the plane of the lake's surface.
Fuji GF 35-70mm lens at 65mm. Many focus bracketed exposures stacked later in Photoshop. Not stacked very well in my opinion!
Pentax 645 45-85mm lens at 85mm on GFX 100s with the Fotodiox tilted several degrees to make the focus plane conform to the plane of the lake.
Pentax 645 45-85mm not tilted. Five exposure focus bracket later stacked in Photoshop.
Pentax 645 45-85mm lens at 85mm with Fotodiox adapter on Fuji GFX 100s. This is a crop of an image featuring the texture of the ripples with the lens tilted and focused on the plane of the lake.
Fuji GF 35-70 at 63mm on Fuji GFX 100s. I used auto bracket in the camera and later stacked in Photoshop. This is a mess. Cropped to match the above crop.
Pentax 645 45-85mm at about 70mm on GFX 100s. Fotodiox was tilted so that the focus plane ran along the surface of this fast flowing river.
This is a crop from the above to show the ripple texture. This rendering of detail was achieved along the entire stretch of river.thanks to tilt-shift.
Fuji GF 35-70mm at 70mm on Fuji GFX 100s. Auto focus bracket in camera and then stacked in Photoshop. Again, a mess.
A crop from the above focus stacked image. Attractive or not, a focus stack of moving water is not so much a photo of something as a computer fabrication, sometimes with appeal but usually not.
So much for my evidence that you sometimes need tilt for for moving things. Now we turn to the advantages of being able to shift a lens down. It's often tempting to use wide-angle lenses to get photos with big foregrounds, but aiming the camera down to include those foregrounds rather than shifting the lens down often results in a distorted mess. (Maybe here is where better post-processing know-how would help me?)
Fuji GF 20-35mm on Fuji GFX 100s. Camera was aimed down. .
Canon 17mm tilt-shift on GFX 100s. Shifted down rather than the camera aimed down. Verticals look better to me. Also, shifting down makes the foreground bigger and the background smaller. Good or bad depending on the purpose of the photo. In this case good. Also, a slight tilt of the lens made everything sharp without needing to focus bracket. Tilting just made this photo easier, but shifting down was (for me) what made the image worth taking.
Canon 17mm tilt-shift on Fuji GFX. Lens was unshifted and camera was aimed down in order to emphasize shadows.
Canon 17mm tilt shift lens on Fuji GFX 100s. Camera was level and lens was shifted down. It's so common in landscape photography to want to shift down instead of aim down. For me at least it is less common in landscape photography to want to shift a wide angle up. Shifting down is when tilt-shift is really helpful.
Fuji GF 20-35mm at 20mm on Fuji GFX 100s. Camera was aimed down, absurdly distorting the larch tree. Correcting the distortion in this image might have been within my processing ability, but I decided instead to return to the location a week later with the 17mm tilt-shift.
Canon 17mm tilt-shift lens shifted down instead of aimed down. Same larch tree from the same angle but admittedly a slightly different composition later in the season. I felt better equipped to get what I wanted with the tilt-shift lens.
