ARSAT 35mm T/S tilt and shift fits on D70?

[antoine_morin]

I am very tempted to succumb to the NAS and get an ARSAT 35mm T/S

tilt and shift. The seller (on the big auction site) can't tell me how well it fits on a D70. An artile dating

from 2001 in Shutterbug was mentioning that the lens did not quite

clear the prism protuberance of "newer" Nikon bodies. Anyone care to

speculate or provide empirical data on this lens and how it fits on

Nikon DSLR?

[bryan_lardizabal]

Go to http://www.kievcamera.com/index.shtml

 

They will let you know if it works and the site has all the lens specifications

[hannu]

I cannot help you directly, but just in case the information is of any use: I own a Hartblei 35mm/f2.8 "super-rotator" which mounts well on my D100 (though I use it only with my film bodies). The only hitch is that the knob releasing the rotation for determining the shift axis is very close to the body and will be difficult though not impossible to access when it is under the prism. But all movements can be performed 100%.

[antoine_morin]

I succumbed.

 

Lens fit, but not without fiddling a bit. Thanks to the lens rotating capability, one can mount the lens slowly and nudge thetilt/shift mechanism so to make the mount click. I sure would not want to do it in the dark, and this is not a fast process, but it does work.

 

Optically, the lens is surprisingly good. Color and contrast are similar to the Nikon 35/2 and 28-105. Not tilted or shifted, it quite sharp wide open in the center, less so in the corners. By f/5.6 it is actually sharper than my 35/2, 28-105@35m, and 18-35@35mm.

 

The real issue with the D70 is the difficulty to see where the plane of focus falls when the lens is tilted. My eyes are certainly not good enough for that. And I am struggling to see the effect even on the lcd (time for new glasses maybe?). So my shots are rather hit or miss if I try to play with the "flou artistique" and keep the lens wide open when tilted. Closed down, it is of course easier to manage, (although the viewfinder gets VERY dark), but then the effect is less pronounced.<div></div>

[antoine_morin]

And another example using maximum tilt as in the previous image, but with the camera rotated so that the plane of focus goes from the front right the the back left (f/2.8 again)<div></div>