Canon's TS-E 17mm/f4L Tilt-Shift Lens on a Nikon D700

<p>Hi, is this possible at all (I searched, didn't find)?</p>

<p>Thanks :)</p>

<p>No unless you want to do pretty serious hacking...</p>

<p>Beyond what Oskar said, the depth from the end of the lens to the film plane is different for Canon and Nikon, with Nikon being deeper. That is one reason why you can adapt Nikon mount lenses to the Canon.</p>

<p>Why not use the Nikkor PC lenses?</p>

<p>There are three reasons why it is near impossible. Firstly as mentioned above, the Canon lens to sensor distance is less than the Nikon lens to sensor distance. Secondly the Canon lens has a wider bayonet. So you would have to remove the Canon lens mount, and replace it with a Nikon one, assuming of course that the rear elements of the lens did not foul the mirror, or the sides of the camera lens mount opening. Lastly Canon lenses use electronic actuation of the AF and aperture. So even were you able to mount the lens, you would not be able to actuate the aperture.<br /> The best way to use this lens is on a Canon camera. I'm told it's almost as if they were made to work together.</p>

<p>The D700 is not a cheap camera either. To try to fit such a lense on it would very likely void any warranty it had.</p>

<p>Right, didn't think so, just checking, thanks all.</p>

<p>"Why not use the Nikkor PC lenses?"<br>

Actually, the OP asks a reasonable question, and one Nikon ought to pay attention to. Nikon recently revamped their PC lens line, and besides repeating their previous mistake with the non-adjustability of the swing direction, they've fallen behind Canon in their focal length offerings - Nikon doesn't make a PC equivalent to the ultrawide 17mm TS.</p>

<p>I wish I'd know the 17mm TS was going to happen before I chose between my D700 and the 5DII last June. Interestingly, there's a 3rd-party chipped adapter made to allow use of the Nikon 14-24/2.8 on a FF Canon body.</p>

<p>This is exactly why I am making the switch. I wish I was a little more informed when I bought into the nikon system. Besides not having a TS-E 17, there are no constant F4 lenses like the 70 - 200 or 24 - 105 IS.No ultra wide for DX that even compares to the 10 - 22, and I'm constantly having to do more work to process my Raw images because I'm forced to use the inferior NX software. But then again we did get the 35 1.8 DX and 85 micro DX...Great, that's just what we were all waiting for :-( I don't know who is sitting behind the nikon desk making all the decisions, but they need to wake up! Sure you camera bodies are built well but I'm a photographer and not a carpenter, I don't need to hammer nails with it. Sorry for the rant, just couldn't help myself.</p>

<p><em>repeating their previous mistake with the non-adjustability of the swing direction,</em></p>

<p>The Canon TS-E lenses except the newest two have this same issue. The separate adjustability of the direction of tilt and shift requires additional mechanics which increase the size and cost of the lenses. It's a trade-off.</p>

<p>True, the 17 TS-E is unique. I don't care about such wide lenses but if you need one, get the Canon lens and a Canon body. There is also a possibility that Nikon makes a 17mm or 18mm PC-E later on, if there is a demand. Personally I never needed anything wider than the 24 on 35mm film, and I don't need one on FX digital. The 24 allows already quite extreme shots.</p>

 

<p>If one is to list items that are not very necessary to make, a 17 tilt/shift for SLRs would come towards the top of that list. The mirror box of the SLR interferes with the T/S features and severely limits the degree of freedom when the focal length gets really short (or the angle of view wide enough). When would be feasible on a large-format technical camera is less easy to pull off with a SLR (I have used both).</p>

<p>I have compared the results by the Nikkor 24 PC-E for close-ups vs what one can obtain with a 20mm f/3.5 plus the K-1 ring, and there is hardly any advantage of the PC-E even with full tilt. For landscapes you gain more of course, but the main advantage is the shift (for architecture).</p>

<p>Bjorn, what exactly is limited in the movements of the 17 TS-E? The circle of coverage in terms of angle of view is extreme, allowing liberal shift movements. The tilt is limited to only 6.5 degrees but I imagine it still to be useful for some landscape and architectural situations. For close-ups, would you really want to use a lens of 104 degree angle of view?</p>

<p>In close-up photography I often run into limitations in the tilt of the 85mm PC-E, a problem without realistic expectations of a solution. However, the question is how easy it is to obtain frame-filling images of subjects that are 2x3 inches in size with a technical camera and digital back? I can see it in the studio, but what about in the backcountry? When you need to take a plane to get to the location? When you are traveling with a group that will not wait? I think the small format solution is quite practical for backpacking and travel.</p>

<p>Sometimes I would like to correct keystoning of trees in the background while using tilt to increase sharpness of the foreground creek, for example. This one could do with the new Canon lenses but not the Nikon PC-E, without modifying the relative orientation. I can live with what I have, it cost enough as it is. Certainly I cannot afford a technical camera with a MF digital back and lenses.</p>

<p>Problem is as any user of t/s should know, that of degrees of freedom when the Scheimpflug principle is followed. With a very short lens you tend to approach the subject quite close. Then, the vertical position of the camera becomes of paramount importance. The usual user error is to approach with the camera station too close to the ground. Then, you'll get the near foreground and the tree tops sharp since there are no degrees of freedom left for the orientation of the focus plane and the middle ground becomes a mush. Even stopping fully down might not be sufficient. You need to lift the camera and angle it downwards to get that "extended" depth of field. But in case with a very wide angle lens, you have almost the same effect with no tilt at all.</p>

<p>Shift movements are easier to apply with a wide lens, but again, correcting converging lines needs to be done with care and some slight remaining keystoning is often necessary. The practical difference between using a t/s lens and shift, or shooting in portrait mode and crop away the foreground becomes small on a D3X.</p>

<p>I did a lot of superwide t/s work up close in my days with 6x9 and 4x5" technical cameras. But of course using 17mm or 58/65 mm is very different despite both giving approx 104 degrees angle of view on their respective systems.</p>

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<p><em>With a very short lens you tend to approach the subject quite close. </em></p>

 

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<p>In landscape and architectural work, just a couple of degrees of tilt (where the difficulty is how to make a tiny adjustment precisely, not the maximum tilt limits imposed by the lens) can result in dramatically enhanced sharpness when the subject is sufficiently planar. I don't care for exaggerated perspective so I'd never photograph a small object with a 24 or 17; I do not normally run into tilt limits with my 24 PC-E.</p>

 

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<p><em>The practical difference between using a t/s lens and shift, or shooting in portrait mode and crop away the foreground becomes small on a D3X.</em></p>

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<p>I don't see a good economy in getting a 6.5k€ body if it is used to obtain 14 MP images after cropping, when a 1300€ lens can give a shifted full frame image of 12 MP (probably with better detail contrast and tonality as the distance between photosites is longer) is on a cheaper, more generally applicable body. Adjusting the angle of the camera to minimize keystoning becomes more, not less difficult in this alternative approach, as the focal length and consequently, the viewfinder image are then smaller than when a shift lens approach is used => more difficult to see.</p>

<p>Anyway, I appreciate that there are more than one way to skin a cat.</p><div></div>

<p>Since it seems so popular to mock Canon's achievement in the 17mm TS-E, I would like to challenge anyone to present a way of producing an image that corresponds to its maximum shift using any other means (except geometrical transformation from fisheye). The angle of view corresponding to the image circle of the 17mm TS-E is 126 degrees, while Schneider XL series lenses top at 120 degrees and the widest image circle in a Rodenstock lens I was able to find was 112 degrees.</p>

<p>To me it seems somewhat unfair to criticise the 17mm Canon for its movements when according to the specifications it appears to be cutting edge among superwide angle lenses of any format (in terms of shift freedom, not tilt).</p>

<p>I will post an image pair taken with the 24 PC-E later on, to illustrate the effect of tilt on sharpness in a small format wide angle in a real world image. The weather is just miserable at the moment and I don't have a pair of images taken with and without tilt, since I usually delete the images which aren't the best of the series.</p>

<p>Another factor to consider is simply the fact that one may carry a small format camera for a variety of reasons in the field. I never purchased a large format camera, opting for Mamiya 7 6x7 system and small format digital because of wind considerations (at that time I was living in Boston and it was often really windy). In a forest like the above shot, the trees do block wind effectively, so one might use a 4x5. I still don't see it as an economical option as almost no one develops 4x5 film any more, my favorite color films do not exist in sheet size, and medium format digital back prices are, well, they're still very high. While small format tilt can often be limiting e.g. for macro shots, I rarely see alternative approaches being used outside of the studio. There is Pekka Luukkola's view camera shots with leaves in the foreground which are quite nice, but again don't correspond to a 17mm equivalent angle of view.</p>

<p>I'm willing to be proven wrong by example images, of course. Just that I get this impression that most view camera owners don't actually take their cameras out much. I don't know where I got that idea from. And I mean this in the best way (as an encouragement).</p>