Nikon 85mm f2.8 T&S Re-orientation... PC or PC-E...Cost?

Anyone know offhand how much Nikon charge to have the 85mm f2.8's T and S made into the same orientation, rather than perpendicular as it's supplied from the factory.

I asked Nikon Sweden about my PC-E 85/2.8D this summer and the cost was very high, 4 580 SEK (approximately 440 €).

 

It appears that some of the PC-E lenses do not need additional parts whereas others need longer cables when re-oriented, but still the cost is ridiculous.

That's crazy!

 

I guess if it's a non E, then it's just mechanics.

 

DIY I wonder...:-)

Even D-lenses have electronics so if you do decide to do it yourself, please make sure the wiring is long enough to still allow for all combinations of rotation and shift.

I'm curious where the wiring might be regarding the movements. I'll see if I can find a tear-down on line.

I use a straight shift lens (PC-Nikkor 35mm), but my new 17mm lens (Canon) has both tilt and shift and can be reoriented. I am glad I can do that, but actually have only done it to see if it works.

 

Tilt is more useful than I had thought it would be for my kind of shooting (landscape, architecture mostly), but honestly I still do mostly shift.

At least with the PB-4 bellows, Nikon's designers got the tilt and shift axes in the correct orientation to each other.

 

Crossed T&S axes make no sense whatsoever, unless you habitually take pictures of buildings diagonally on - and don't mind losing use of the lens 'sweet spot'.

 

Do Nikon have any actual photographers working for them these days? The designer of one of their metering algorithms happily admitted to being a keen snapshooter on their website once. Hmmmm!

Agreed, RJ. My Hartblei always let me choose independently, but I still usually used tilt rather than swing (though admittedly I suppose horizontal shift is useful for landscapes). Annoyingly the Hartblei has detents, IIRC, every 60 degrees - so the 90 degree offset is a bit unstable; on the plus side, shooting with the camera in portrait orientation with a tilt-shift suits the split-screen live view mode on the D810/D850.

 

I was going to ditch my tilt-shifts, but I concluded they're not as bad as I thought they were, and they're not really worth anything. I was looking at the Samyang, which is also flexible in orientation, but in brief tests I was very much not blown away by the optics. So I think what I need is the Nikkor 19mm, and a small lottery payout to acquire it.

Crossed T&S axes make no sense whatsoever, unless you habitually take pictures of buildings diagonally on - and don't mind losing use of the lens 'sweet spot'.

 

This is a common situation for me; a perpendicular shot of a facade is (in my opinion) boring and static whereas shooting the facade at an angle makes it immediately more interesting and dynamic. I haven't noticed any issues regarding sweet spot when I've done this with the 24, 45 or 85 PC. In fact I find the effect quite interesting. I do see that in landscape photography the altered relative orientations of the two movements would be advantageous, but I do both architectural and landscape and don't want to give up the movements that are available as standard.

 

All the tilting equipment (including three Nikkors and a tilt/shift bellows) I have has fixed relative orientations for tilt and shift, except the 19 PC. I take advantage of what movements are available to me, but with the 19 PC I have only used shift so far. The 19 PC is optically fantastic and unusual for a PC Nikkor wide angle, it is excellent already at full aperture, even with movements applied. With the 24 PC I'm at f/8-11 usually, so in that sense it is more limiting. But the 19 PC is a bit scary to use, with no hood available.

 

While I've been aware that the relative angles of application of the tilt and shift can be adjusted in service, I've never felt I wanted to do that.

 

Do Nikon have any actual photographers working for them these days?

 

My understanding is that Nikon had architectural and not so much landscape photographers in mind when they created the PC series.

Edited October 18, 2018 by ilkka_nissila

I get the architectural argument. To be fair, I don't shift much for landscapes - I mostly want the tilt, and unless I'm confused the constraint is with the relationship between tilt and shift, not in the orientation of either relative to the image. There are definitely times when I'd quite like shift in the same direction as tilt anyway, but I consider shift to be a trade-your-aberrations alternative to doing keystone correction in software (or shooting with a wider lens and cropping) so it's not the end of the world.

 

This is where I start persuading myself I want a 24mm PC-E lens again. Must not succumb to more NAS...

I was planning on using it for it's tilt/shift macro abilities, whilst using it's res sweetspot at, say f5.6/8,

 

... and then building 3D forms from those.

 

(75mm round medals need to be shot obliquely, ~45 deg, and shot, say 20 times as it's rotated. and popped into a 3D generator for subsequent 3D printing.)

 

The res sweetspot doesn't coincide with the DoF needed, and of course shooting obliquely messes up the software a little bit.

 

Re:,,,,NAS. Resistance is futile.....:(

Several years ago i have done the conversion myself, i own both the 85PC as wel as 85 PC-E.

In my case no new cables were required, just good tools and 5 minutes work.

I unscrewed the four screws with the correct tool of the 85PC-E, the cables were wrapped together with a piece of paper sticky tape..

I very carefully removed the paper tape, then the cables were long enough, gently rotated the base, and re-assembled the base of the lens.

All in all i spent maybe 5 minutes. For me was quite a simpel job.

After several years the lens is still working perfectly.

Maybe someone can create a youtube video of this.

Good News... thank you ilmilco!

 

Although this is for a Canon, does this look familiar?

 

I don't generally use the tilt and shift together, so have no real problem, but appreciate Ilmilco's input, and might have to open up my 85 PCD to see if its wires are long enough just in case.

 

I would mention, however, with respect to Andrew Gerrard's argument, that shifting can help more than just perspective control, as a shifting lens also makes for very nice rectilinear panoramas, and can also allow you to shoot into a window or mirror, or with the sun directly behind you, without showing yourself or your shadow in the image. I usually use a 35/2.8 PC lens as my DX normal in part for this reason. The 85, with its ability to shift both left and right without flipping the lens, is very nice for double wide shots.

Good News... thank you ilmilco!

 

Although this is for a Canon, does this look familiar?

 

Yes Mike , very similar. Please please please use the correct size screw driver, and do not over tighten the screws. Be very gentle with the wires.

Just curious, does the non E have wires/ribbon cables? I guess if it does. it's aperture indexing, not D istance?

 

... or maybe that too?

Edited October 18, 2018 by mike_halliwell

Back in 2010 I tried to do this myself with an 85mm PC. The cable seemed too short. As I maneuvered the parts this way and that, being very careful not to break the cable … I broke the cable. Nikon USA charged $300 for the repair. Edited October 18, 2018 by Kent Shafer

....and the cable on the non E-PC does what? It's almost completely manual already.!!

The non-E PC has a cable. It's a preset lens with an aperture button. When the button is out, the aperture stays open, and when in it stops down to your setting, but in both cases an AF camera's meter shows the setting. Although that can be handy for determining whether the shutter speed is high enough, and the like, I'm not sure it's worth the bother, and suspect that the lens would work pretty well as a pure preset with the cable broken, as it does on a pre-AF camera anyway. But I'm not sure how it would behave with a broken cable but the contacts still on. To make it behave like a pure and unchipped preset one might have to remove the contacts. I'm not planning to break mine to find out.

I would suppose that the main use of an 85mm T/S would be for product photography?

 

"'Zat is Not my doug" as Clouseax says, but perhaps that had something to do with how it's set up?

Think I'll stick with my 5x4 for T&S. I can buy and process a fair amount of film for the price of Nikon's 19mm, which still doesn't have free axis selection.

 

Also, back movements eliminate the shift & re-aim shuffle.

 

Maybe one day we'll get properly professional digital cameras.

Maybe!

 

However, I guess they'll be T&S adapters for the Z-Mount.

 

I wonder how the heck you work out which lens has the best image circle to play with?

I would mention, however, with respect to Andrew Gerrard's argument, that shifting can help more than just perspective control, as a shifting lens also makes for very nice rectilinear panoramas, and can also allow you to shoot into a window or mirror, or with the sun directly behind you, without showing yourself or your shadow in the image. I usually use a 35/2.8 PC lens as my DX normal in part for this reason. The 85, with its ability to shift both left and right without flipping the lens, is very nice for double wide shots.

 

Oh, agreed. I just maintain that you can get the same effect by cropping from a wider lens, or by applying keystone correction in software to an image shot at an angle. Obviously you're not producing the same sampling of pixels in those cases, but you're also not using a shift lens at its extremes - so the lens has to be pretty optically good in order to make shifting worth the inconvenience, given the quality of recent wide angles and the pixel density of modern sensors. Hence my turning down the Samyang, and why I rarely shift my cheap 35mm Kiev (which has the shift and tilt axes mechanically constrained to 90 degrees).

 

Tilt is harder to reproduce, without some form of light field capture (such as stacking).

 

Think I'll stick with my 5x4 for T&S. I can buy and process a fair amount of film for the price of Nikon's 19mm, which still doesn't have free axis selection.

 

How do you mean? One of the reasons the 19mm appeals to me is that I was under the impression it did have independent axes.

 

Also, back movements eliminate the shift & re-aim shuffle.

 

I've been hoping someone will eventually stick a sensor on three independent worm drives and give autofocus tilt/shift. It's very hard to do with a mirror in the way, but could be a game changer for a Z series. An an adaptor with an integrated tripod mount so the lens stays still and the camera moves might help - although historically I've often shot a tilt-shift by setting up the tilt and then waving the lens around freehand until I get the focal plane in the right place (which is a bit trickier with large format). I've been asking for Nikon to do the four-way split live view for tilt shift for some time (including writing to them pre-D810) and they've not quite got the hang of it yet.

 

Mike, I'd not hold my breath with an F-mount lens unless you're using a DX sensor. I do think you're more likely to get away with tilting than shifting, but you might still intersect the light cone with a forward tilt. Some tests on optical benches seem to go slightly outside the image area, but since baffles blocking unwanted light in lenses are generally a good thing, I'd not count on it in the general case.

Andrew, T&S lenses only allow you to move them freely with relation to the lens mount. While most view cameras allow you to move the lens plate freely (which can be compared to the movements a T&S lens offers), many also allow you to move the film holder freely. This allows for much more movement and the limits are usually set by the image circle the lens in question can cover.

Andrew, T&S lenses only allow you to move them freely with relation to the lens mount. While most view cameras allow you to move the lens plate freely (which can be compared to the movements a T&S lens offers), many also allow you to move the film holder freely. This allows for much more movement and the limits are usually set by the image circle the lens in question can cover.

 

I appreciate the convenience of separate front and rear movements, but surely they're optically equivalent, except in as much as you might also need to tilt or relocate the camera vertically? Is the argument that the physical obstruction of the mount is an issue? (I'm not totally sure that couldn't be solved optically somehow, although it could also be solved pretty well by going to the Z mount, at least if incident angle on the sensor isn't a problem.)