Which mount to choose for Tilt Shift adapter to use on Canon?

<p>I currently have a Arax 80mm f/2.8 Tilt Shift lens with an EOS mount. I like it a lot, but the focal length is a little long. I am thinking about getting a Tilt Shift adapter that will mount non-TS manual focus lenses onto my Canon. I have a choice of quite a few mounts for the lenses to choose from, and I currently have no manual focus lenses in these mounts. I'm wanting to get the lowest price/pretty good picture over any price/absolute best picture, but I don't want crappy lenses. I do like the quality of photos I'm getting from my Arax, for example, and have Rokinon, Contax/Yashica/Minolta/Pentax manual-focus lenses that I think have good quality. So I'm looking for a similar or better kind of lens, at the lowest end of the price scale.<br>

<br>

Also, outside of price, which would have the widest variety of lenses, primes in particular?<br /> <br />These are the mounts that are available:<br /> Nikon F<br />Leica R<br />M42<br />Olympus OM<br />Arax/Pentacon Six/Kiev 60/88CM<br />Hasselblad<br />Kiev 88<br /><br /><br /> I'm going to check ebay for all of them for prices, and will research online, but any opinions I could get here would be appreciated.</p>

<p>My vote goes to Nikon F. Leica R lenses are getting shatteringly expensive, M42 lenses are old and will probably not have enough covering power applications, Olympus lenses are good but not plentiful, any MF lens will be costly, particularly a Hasselblad wide-angle, </p>

I use a Mirex mount (on EOS bodies) and while expensive it is r,rally very good. They come in Pentax 645, Mamiya 645

and Hassy mounts. I use the Mamiya M645 as I used to shoot these bodies and have lots of lenses. I would suggest

that for tilt / shift work you need to use medium format lenses as the image circle of a 35mm lens is too small for much of

a shift or a tilt. In the list above this gives Hassy or Kiev. Hassy is great but you will find the glass very expensive. My

suggestion is to go down the Pentax or Mamiya route as they both have very good glass and it is very cheap ( look on

KEH). I know Mirex makes adapters and I am sure you can find Chinese ones out there. If you are shooting film them

metering becomes a challenge with significant tilts.

<p>Mamiya 645 lenses are frighteningly cheap. There's a 45/2.8 for sale on Rangefinder Forum right now for $105.<br>

Pentax 645 lens prices are higher due to the 645D camera -- they aren't orphans.<br>

Interestingly, I have a Pentax K 28/3.5 shift lens that was converted to EOS mount, but came with the K mount, and I converted it back to K mount to use on my Pentax LX. But that lens doesn't tilt.<br>

Or, consider the Samyang 24/3.5 tilt-shift lens. Ooh, pretty expensive at $1000.</p>

<p>80mm being "normal" on medium format (MF) cameras, even wide-angle MF lenses (45-50mm) are going to be long on even a 35mm-sensor, much less an APS-C one. I have a shift only adapter for my Pentacon 6 lenses, but honestly don't find much use for a 45-180mm shift lens on a Canon EOS.</p>

<p><br /> The trouble with one of these adapters is that all of them I have seen require a considerable amount of space between the lens and the focal plane, thus meaning no focus to infinity without some kind of optics (which sort of defeats the purpose of the whole thing, IMO).</p>

<p>This is a contradiction.<br /> If you are doing something like product photography the longer FL may not matter, and the infinity focus might not matter either.<br /> Otherwise you'd do better to find an older non-AI Nikkor PC lens (no tilt, though) and a simple Nikon>EOS adapter (I use my PC-Nikkor 35mm f/2.8 frequently).<br /> If you need tilt, you may just need to belly-up-to-the-bar and buy one of the current TS-E lenses. After skulking about trying to find a cheaper solution, I finally gave in to the inevitable and got the truly fantastic T$-E 17mm. </p>

<p>JDM - the Mirex adapter works fine at infinity and contains no optics. Indeed the handling is very close to Canons own EF Tilt shift lenses. Wide angle is a problem but the Mamiya 35mm lens is readily available and quite cheap. Obviously extreme wide angle is an issue and for that you do need to spend the money (I have the very impressive Canon 17 F4 which with the 1.4x TC will also give a 24 F5.6). I agree that there is no substitute for the real thing but Canon never made an EF 35mm TS (just the FD one) so with the Mamiya lenses you get a 35, 45, 55 and 80 that are really very good quality. Since the mirex adapter (all in shipping, wire transfer etc...) was less than $400 and I already had the Mamiya glass I found it a great solution as the 90mm and 45mm canon TS lenses cost $2600. The IQ from the Mamiya lenses is very high - indeed the 80 F1.9 is better than the canon 85 F1.8. The 35 and 45 are softer at the edges but still very good performers.<br>

The main issue with the OP's list is that most of the lenses he lists are 35mm lenses which are designed to cover the 35mm frame and thus are useless with any noticeable tilt or shift.</p>

<p>But surely the Mirex works only with larger format lenses, not 35mm format wide angles, which was the difficulty I was talking about - given the high cost of anything shorter than 50mm on the larger formats. I realize I didn't make that clear, but I knew no optics were required for the medium format lenses, just as they are not for my shift P6>EOS adapter.</p>

<p>What I do here is pretty exclusively architectural photography, and the longer focal lengths like 45mm and above aren't much use. I use shift a lot more than tilt, though the latter proved more useful than I had expected.<br /> Are you doing product-type work?</p>

I have done some product work but not a lot. I have also do architectural and the 17 is a great lens for that (shifted). I will

also shoot landscape using tilt for personal work. The Mirex only works on medium format lenses and I was suggesting

that if the OP was serious this was the way to go as 35 mm lenses are unlikely to work well. If you have ever tried an FD

to EOS adapter with an optical element (all except the ED Mika adapter have one) the results are use

Ess as the optical element in the adapter causes major problems (unless you can find the one Canon made for long

telescope which is over $1000 used). I think the only Mamiya 645 has cheap lenses wider than 50mm as the 35 can be

found for $250 to $350 I believe Kiev only went to 45mm excluding fisheyes.

<p>I looked at this issue closely a couple of years ago and decided not to do it, here are my thoughts on why.</p>

<p>For adaption, medium format is undoubtedly the way forwards but you can't get a super (e.g. 24mm) or ultra-wide (e.g. 17mm) lens and you need a quality adapter.</p>

<p>At that time there were two manufacturers of high quality adapters, both in Germany - Mirex and Zörk. Both of those are pricey, and while some of the Pentax and Mamiya 645 lenses are not that expensive, the best wide is generally reckoned to be the Pentax 35mm and there are very few cheap copies of that on the market so the overall package comes in at TS-E money. As Canon don't have a 35mm TS-E It might seem worth considering, except that the TS-E 24L mk II was reported to hold up well with a 1.4x extender II (will be better with a Mark III Extender) which I concur with.</p>

<p>Canon's 45mm TS-E is reputed to be a bit of a dog so you might want to try a 45mm Medium format on an adapter at this FL. Personally, I must have a good copy as mine seems absolutely fine for resolution and CA within sensible limits on a 5DII.</p>

<p>At 80/90mm you should get a good sharp lens from one of the medium format makers and with a 35 the package gets more reasonable on cost. But then the Canon 90mm has a good reputation for sharpness.</p>

<p>Aside from the lack of truly wide options and the costs it's worth factoring in that it's still an expensive way to experiment with tilt and shift, the adapters are harder to sell on (buy a s/h canon TS-E and you'll not lose much), the extra connection, lack of electronic aperture control (not such a bid deal as you'll be in manual mode anyway), lack of EXIF, etc.</p>

<p>In the end I came round to the conclusion that the Canon TS-E lenses were not such bad value after all. I took the time to build a set of them. I also sacrificed my Canon FD collection and my EF16-35L to buy the 17mm TS-E. I've never regretted the decision to ditch the zoom as the 17mm is a phenomenal bit of glass and the improvement over the zoom is truly like night & day.</p>