Why use a Canon TS-E 90mm tilt/shift in product photography?

I have a crop camera (30D) and have been reading this <a

href="http://www.photo.net/equipment/canon/tilt-shift">Tilt/shift</a>. Now, I think

I get why you'd use wide angle TS lenses for architecture, why you'd exploit the

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheimpflug_principle">Scheimpflug

principle</a> to get both very near and far field in focus and how you can use

things like Lens Babies to selectively throw portions of the photo out of focus.

I am trying to understand how significant this is in product photography, in

the studio in the near field - I assume it is used to maximise DOF and to keep

the perspectives correct (for exactness and IQ). I also see you can use TCs

with the T/S which can increase the effective shift. I would assume that if you

want this sort of high quality you'd be using Medium Format and that anything

less would be a compromise.<br><br>

My questions are<br>

 

1. How useful are T/S's in work other than architecture/landscape?<br>

2. What advantages do they offer compared to the Photoshop transform (distort)

& crop?<br>

3. What exactly are the longer T/S's used for compared to the shorter focal

length ones which I would expect to see used on landscapes and complete

buildings.<br><br>

 

I am not saying I need one - just trying to understand their advantages and

whether their usefullness is diminished on a crop camera.

Glen, a lot of what can be done with a tilt lens can be done in PS, BUT PS can't produce sharp focus where none exists in the original image. For example, with a tilt lens you can get perfectly sharp focus both near and far using very wide apertures and fast shutter speeds while throwing the focus elsewhere. With PS, you can artificially do the "blur" bit (and it's obvious when it is usually obvious when it's created in software rather than lens) but you can't make the focus sharp near and far unless you start compositing images, or start off with an image taken with a very small aperture (i.e. large DOF) and hence slow shutter speed. So the tilt lens can be ideal for fairly close up product photograph where you may want to hand hold the camera.

 

Following here are 3 photographs of the front of my Mir 26B lens. They have all been taken with a Vega 2.8/90 medium format lens attached to my Canon 10D, at f2.8 and a distance of 0.75m, 1/60sec. The first 2 are with the lens straight, and the third one with the lens tilted by 8 degrees. The only way to recreate this using a straight lens and using PS would be to dramatically increase DOF using very small aperture and then adding blur selectively to the bits of less interest than the front of the lens, or to composite several sharp images of various parts of the front of the lens.

First picture with lens straight, f2.8, 1/60sec. The lens used is Vega 2.8/90 medium format lens which is equivalent of something like 260mm on crop sensor DSLR. Distance to subject is only 0.75m.<div></div>

Second picture

Second picture here<div></div>

Third picture with lens tilted 8 degrees to left<div></div>

BTW, these were all using the Arax tilt adapter to connect the Pentacon 6 mount medium format Vega lens to the Canon 10D. Only post processing has been teak to levels and slight sharpen.

Notice in the first picture that the nearest point of the front of the lens is in focus, but none of the rest of the lens is. In the second picture, the furthest point of the front of the lens is in focus but this also brings into focus the back of the lens as well. In the third picture, the whole of the front of the lens is in focus but none of the rest of the lens. Like I said, the only way to recreate without tilting the lens is to use a much smaller aperture to increase DOF and to then manually blur the rest in PS. But it's often not possible to use very small apertures especially when hand holding the camera and using daylight for illumination. Several images of various focus points of the front of the lens could be composited in PS but that's one hell of a lot more work esp when considering it's so easy to achieve the desired result straight out of camera in one shot.

Thanks Pete - can you clarify your notations for 1 & 2 "2.8/90 at f2.8 straight" and "2.8/90 at f2.8 lens straight" - the first has no T/S effect - what exactly changed on the 2nd? And as you are adjusting only the orientation between the lens focal plane and the sensor focal plane, the variation on handholding between lens and subject is not significant?

Sorry Glen for not making that bit clear - in picture 1, I had the lens straight (i.e. with no tilt) and focused on the near part of the front of the lens. In picture 2, I had the lens straight again and focused on the far part of the front of the lens. So there was no lens tilt in either of these images. In picture 3, I tilted the camera lens 8 degrees to the left so the plane of focus comes straight across the front of the lens. In all three pictures, the camera was held in the same position relative to the subject, but slightly rotated in picture 3 to align the plane of focus with the plane of the front of the subject lens. So you are correct in saying there is no significant variation on handholding between lens and subject.

 

The 90mm focal length of this lens when fitted to the crop sensor Canon 10D is something like 260mm equivalent assuming a 1.8 conversion factor from medium format to 35mm (I think that's right), and 1.6 conversion factor from 35mm to crop sensor DSLR. Distance from lens to subject was 75cm.

 

If you look here http://www.photo.net/photo/6566907 you'll find a picture of my laptop keyboard that was taken just by the light of one little lamp so a wide aperture was needed. This would be hard to recreate in PS. And further down the thread you'll see what happens if you try to take the picture from a different angle to get plane of sharp focus in the same place, and then rotate and crop it in order to try and recreate the tilt lens image. It just don't work!

Hi Glen,

 

FYI, using 30Ds like you, I prefer the 45/2.8 TS-E for tabletop product shots. It's a good, short tele focal length on crop sensor cameras, and I'm working in a fairly tight space. If I were using a full frame camera, I might opt for the 90mm TS-E instead.

 

Another interesting use for Tilt-Shift is to "see around" an obstruction. I don't have any good way to illustrate this, unfortunately. But basically the shift can help keep an image square, although the camera has to be set up offset a bit. Say you are trying to make a photo of a store front, but there is a light post right at the ideal location for the camera. Using shift allows you to take the shot.

 

Canon's Tilt-Shift lenses have quite a bit of movement, but nowhere near as much as a view camera typically has.

 

Some folks have Canon service reset the Tilt and Shift onto the same plane, especially for architecture and landscape photography. As the lenses come from the factory, the two movements are set 90 degrees to each other.

 

Another interesting use for the Tilt-Shift lenses is when compositing images into a "panorama". Shift the lens to one side, take a shot, then shift it to the other side and take a second shot. The two images can be combined quite easily because of overlap and limited distortions (or "matching" distortions). The final image is approximately square, so it's not a dramatic panorama.

 

When taking an architectural shot, you can "correct" for keystoning of a building in Photoshop, it's true. However, when you correct one thing, another often gets oddly distorted.

 

For example, I had a shot of the old Del Coronado Hotel near San Diego, taken with a 21mm lens on 35mm film. After scanning the image, PS worked to partially correct it the heavy keystoning to the building. But, in the process of doing that a bench that's in the foreground of the image got badly misshapened. I ended up copying just the bench from the original, and pasting it into the corrected version. It worked, but was time consuming to do in a way that didn't look "fiddled with".

 

Often, it's helpful to use both a TS-E lens and Photoshop, together, to most neatly correct keystoning.

 

TS-E work pretty well on crop sensor cameras. There isn't much more limitation, than there is on full frame.

Thanks Peter, Alan. So, just to try things out, the pricing looks a bit prohibitive (Au$1558) for the Canon whereas the MF adaptor combination looks interesting. The MF multiplying factors look significant though (1.8 x 1.6) - and of course you are reduced to manual focus. What is a good tradeoff focal length for an architecture and product 'all in one' lens? I would guess by Canon's range and by your comments that 45mm-90mm effective would be good (i.e. 28mm to 56mm on a 35mm camera). This <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/hartblei45.shtml">Hartblei</a> looks interesting. There's not much on offer on eBay in the 2nd hand 'give it a try' range. I have found the Vegas and the Arax adapters - that does seem like an interesting combination - but it is not both tilt and shift - it's tilt and rotate, how significant is this?<br><br>

 

I must admit I don't understand this: <I>"Some folks have Canon service reset the Tilt and Shift onto the same plane, especially for architecture and landscape photography. As the lenses come from the factory, the two movements are set 90 degrees to each other." </I>I have been thinking ot tilt and shift in terms of pitch, roll and yaw - I understand that the shift moves the image circle around - perhaps I need to find another technical reference or re-read the ones I have seen. (I shoot products for my sister's web business - which isn't exactly demanding in terms of image quality.)

Hey , for Arcitecture you often need something wide- so the 24 is important. I do not think

others than Canons own is available that wide. On cropsensors it is only a wide normal. I had

the 24 on a Eos 1n,filmversion. It is very nice, and I guess that the Canon tse lenses are worth

the extra dollars. It had 11mm shift- that is a lot, you wont get more on a technical camera

before you are running out of the imagecircle.

The 45 I would like for tabletop and when yo have the space(90 for full format). If I hadnt

went for Mamiya I would bought all three of them and a Canon DS mark 3.

I think the 24 is the first choice, because the perspective is stronger on wideangle, and

therefore more important to control.

I feel that almost every shot, if deconstructed, could call for camera movements to be ideal. (Not that I can't handle something less than ideal. I shoot more 35 and medium format than large format.)

 

Movements let you fine tune your composition, tweak converging lines, and control where your plane of focus lies. They let you move the camera position to get an ideal perspective, yet tweak the resulting convergent lines so that they are parallel again, simulating the original camera position. You want to angle the camera down 10 degrees to get the composition you want, but want it to look like a straight-on view, not like you're looking down at a 10 degree angle? You can do this with movements. Want a fast shutter speed and near-to-far focus, but exposure at f/32 won't allow it (not to mention you want to use your lens' sweet spot around the middle of the aperture range)? That's where front tilt and swing come in.

 

I shot a documentary assignment on 4x5 transparencies. 200 frames of the inside of my father's two-bedroom duplex after he died, as he left it. The place I grew up about to be disappear as I knew it, right before I routed it to make way for the landlord to get it ready for the next tenant. I used a 90mm lens (wide angle of view for 4x5), borrowed a Toyo studio camera instead of my Graflex, because I don't have a bag bellows for the Graflex. I could not have got what I wanted to get without camera movements. That's what it's all about; getting what you want.

 

In that sort of environment, I had the luxury of using the ideal camera. A T/S or PC lens on small format is definitely a compromise compared to a view camera. However, you have to think about your subject matter and your shooting conditions. If you are stuck on the idea of small format digital, and want to do these types of shots, might as well go for as much control as possible.

 

Keith

Forgot to mention why I explained the documentary project: EVERY single composition involved some sort of camera movement. Not just because I could, but because I thought it called for it.

 

Keith

Glen, if you want to just give tilt and shift a try, you could just detach your normal lens from the camera and move it slightly in front of the camera lens mount. I do this quite a lot with the 18-55 kit lens and also with a 1.8/50 Pentacon MC. You'll need to focus manually of course, but you can get some really good results using this method. Infinity focus in the centre can be problematic as th elens is a little further forward than normal. I have just made a small bellows type thing from some rubber pond liner to keep the light out.

 

I'd definitely recommend the Arax or Hartblei tilt and shift adapters as well, and a fairly short Pentacon 6 mount medium format lens, before stumping for the Canon (unless of course you're not skint like me and don't mind spending the dough!). The 3.5/45 that I use is equivalent to about 130mm so it's by no means short, but it does focus close and is great for shots of small things and for shots of big things that aren't right in your face. I have some examples in my portfolio under "Experimental" that I have taken with this lens, and this'll give you a rough idea of what it's like. I'm sure you'd have no problem recouping the cost of these by selling on if you do decide to go to Canon after.

"I must admit I don't understand this"

 

Hi again Glen,

 

I'm pretty sure I saw an extensive discussion about using Tilt-shift lenses over on www.luminous-landscape.com I'd suggest you go there and poke around to see if you can find it. I'm sure they do a much better explaining and illustrating it, than I can here.

 

No. Tilt and shift actually serve different functions.

 

Tilt changes the plane of focus.

 

Shift corrects for issues like keystoning of buildings.

 

Certainly, they can be and ofter are used together, and the lenses can be rotated on the camera for various applications. But, as shipped from the factory, the tilt and shift are set at 90 degrees from one another, so there are some limitations.

 

Especially for product shots, you might want a shift so that a round object is properly round, say, but also a tilt to "lay" the plane of focus back along the object, while still using a relatively large aperture (or, you might reverse the tilt to create an especially narrow, but precise, plane of focus).

 

As the lenses are initially set up, when the shift is used to make a vertical correction, the tilt is then only available in the horizontal... and vice versa.

 

I was just mentioning that some find it more useful if both movements are in the sane orientation, and that this is an option. It's not a major change to make, and it's an easily a reversible change should that ever be desirable. It's even offered as a possibility in the lenses' manuals, straight from Canon.

 

Some manufacturers lenses offer only the shift effect (Nikkor PC?) or only the tilt (Lens Babies?). I don't know about the various adapters on the market. Haven't tried them.

 

With all three Canon TS-E lenses you have both types of movement.

 

Still, the Canon lenses are somewhat limited when compared to some large-format view cameras. Those might have shifts (side-to-side), rise and drop (up and down shifts), all used to control perspective relationships. And, they can also have tilts (vertical) and swings (horizontal), to effect the plane of focus. Depending upon the camera, all or some of these movements may be available on both front (lens) and rear (film plane).

 

Some view cameras have more movements than others. For example, I have a Wista 4x5 field camera that has rise & drop movements on the front, swings and tilts both front and rear (which is more limited), but no shifts on either, and no rise and drop on the rear.

 

I came across this, which might help:

 

http://www.photo.net/equipment/canon/tilt-shift

Thanks a lot to all - I am inter-state today but will follow up on this when I return - I have multiple situations where this would be useful - and the knowledge is valuable in itself.

Confusing matters even more is the fact that a "shift" on a T/S lens is different than a shift on large format. Why Canon uses the term "shift is beyond me. What the Canon lenses actually have are the equivalents of front and rear tilt, not of tilt and shift.

 

On large format, a shift is a very simple movement that is nothing but a lateral movement of either the lens (front shift) or the film (rear shift). It is used to slightly change framing, and has no effect on convergence or on the angle of the plane of focus. The up-and-down version of shift is called rise or fall, depending on the direction.

 

Tilts on large format can apply to both lens and film, and are differentiated only by the words "front" and "rear". (Swings have the same effect as tilts, but they involve pivoting the standard toward either side, not forward or rearward like tilts.) Front tilts and swings control the angle of the plane of focus. Rear tilts and swings control the angle of the plane of focus as well as convergence.

 

If you don't understand it, I would just learn to shoot large format first. Then you can come back to small format once you know what the T/S lens is good for.

 

Keith

Glen, it's all easy to understand without the hassle and expense of shooting large format first. A very easy doc is here

http://www.trenholm.org/hmmerk/FVC16.pdf

Thanks once more - just returned from a business trip - will need to read all these references thoroughly this weekend. I appreciate your time.

This may be good for my budget: <a href="http://blog.dennisonbertram.com/hackmaster/2005/02/tilt-shift-pc-lens.htm">cheapie</a>

Some more references for me -

<a href="http://users.gsinet.net/pjwhite/tilt-shift.htm">tilt/shift</a><br>

<a href="http://www.zen20934.zen.co.uk/photography/tiltshift.htm#The%20Tilt%20Function">Holding tank</a><br>