Tilt-Shift theory

Ive read the pamphlet from canon about the TS lens, and understand it can help with shots that have an angular perspective. From reading the forum for a bit, I understand it's popular for shots of houses...
How do you know a shot would benefit from a TS lens? How do you know how much to tilt? When do you use the shift? What do the tilt and shift do optically that I can't do in post?
Thanks for any help you can give.

I don't use mine for buildings and architecture but to answer your questions the lens can be used for any shot where you have straight verticals. It allows you to properly frame the shot (by shifting) without taking the camera off level I.e. Pointing upwards to get the whole building in etc. this avoids perspective distortion.

Tilt is used to increase or decrease DOF. The amount you apply is different depending on the height of the camera. It's worked out in the field by trial and error but you start to get a feel for it after a while and can usually get quite close straight of the bat.

Things you can do with a tilt shift lens that you can't do in post -

Increase DOF beyond what you get by hyperfocal focussing
Set the plane of focus so that it's not square to the sensor
Take photos that stitch together effortlessly - sure you could correct distortion in all 3 photos then try and stitch but the lens makes this quick and easy
Selectively focussing using tilt

Also, on a tilt shift lens the image circle is bigger so on a non shifted shot you do not get the edge problems you get with a standard lens - vignetting, loss of sharpness etc - the lenses do exibit these things in the shifted positions though.

The canon tilt shift lenses as well as being very sharp are also great at handling flare ands CA

A couple of good resources are -


http://www.cambridgein​colour.com …ls/tilt-shift-lenses1.htm
http://www.cambridgein​colour.com …ls/tilt-shift-lenses2.htm

Im sure there's more I've not thought of just now but im sure someone else will chime in. If your serious about architecture photography tilt shift lenses is the way to go.

Interesting about the seamless stitching... Is that because you don't have to move the camera, just tilt and/or shift to reframe?

Correct. I believe parallax can be an issue with the 17mm TSE if you have detail close to the camera but it's not an issue I have ever encountered with the 24mm. There's ways around parallax though such as sliding the camera on the tripod mount and shifting one way and taking the shot, then sliding on the mount the same distance in the other dirextion and shifting the opposite way to get the shot. (That's the basics, you will find more technical info on that online)

Tilt/shift lenses bacame addictive really, since i bought them i didn't touch my other lenses much except Samyang just for few tests, and because i lost many things lst year so i didn't do photography in general to justify using most of my lenses, so i narrowed to use TS for a while.

I do like that shift ability of the lens for stitching, once i did that i started to do more panos, i remember i did 3-4 panos only in the past with one of many lenses and i was scared to stitch and wait long and correct even if i use that RRS panoramic tools, but with TS, i do that without fair.

I still couldn't figure out about tilt function, i did test it, but on LCD or viewfinder i couldn't tell if i applied the tilt good enough, i tried with all degrees or say 1 degree for each frame, and i can only tell on computer monitor or if i zoom on LCD which i don't do much, so i hope i can find a better way to calculate the exact or best tilt degree to save my time rather than shoot many frames and pick the best one later.

This might be of interest http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorial​s/focusing-ts.shtml in addition to the Cambridge info.
I must say I love my TS-E but it requires a lot of patience and a good tripod to use , particularly for the tilt function, you are not going to get a lot of shots in a short time
The biggest difficulty with tilt is getting the focus correct and I found that without live view and the zoom function it was difficult to say the least.
If you are interested in one hire before you buy, they are very specialised and not to everyones taste but like Tareq says they can become addictive

Agreed, live view and x10 zoom are essential for focus setting with tilt.

I think the fact the lens slows you down is what I like most about it when doing landscapes, it makes you stop and think and really work the shot

Want to slow down and really have control? Shoot architecture with one of these.
http://www.largeformat​photography.info …rff-8x10/deardorff012.jpg

You have tilt, shift, rise. fall on both the lens board and the film back giving you twice the perspective control you have with a T&S lens.

airfrogusmc wrote in post #17392735
Want to slow down and really have control? Shoot architecture with one of these.
http://www.largeformat​photography.info …rff-8x10/deardorff012.jpg

You have tilt, shift, rise. fall on both the lens board and the film back giving you twice the perspective control you have with a T&S lens.

I agree, and almost i didn't know how to use that large format until i bought this TS lens, later when i will use LF again i will know how to use it better way, good i have one large format that has almost all movements except front shift which is not a big deal for me.

good info here, I just got the 24mm and have lots to learn.

And some day I'll get me a large format camera, some day...

You can get a Cambo Ultima 35.

The most beneficial use is to give your images a more realistic perspective by shifting down about 5 degrees.

Photos of interiors look kind of tunnel-like and unrealistic when taken with a non-tilt shift lens. You can lower the height of your tripod to get the same effect, but then the ground looks larger and you still don't have an awesome interior photo. You're effectively trying to remove much of the ceiling show without making the ground look large. The only way to do this is with a tilt-shift lens. You can't replicate it in Photoshop.

You also want straight lines, and you can replicate that in Photoshop, but sometimes photoshop over-distorts your corrected shot. The tilt-shift is the better way to get straight lines.

The reason you didn't notice much of an effect with the tilt function is because you own the 24mm tilt-shift. The depth of field is pretty deep on that lens to begin with. You'll notice tilt effects more with the 45mm and especially the 90mm tilt-shift lenses. Likewise, tilt effects are virtually non-existent on the 17mm tilt shift.

That's why.

Tareq wrote in post #17392613
Tilt/shift lenses bacame addictive really, since i bought them i didn't touch my other lenses much except Samyang just for few tests, and because i lost many things lst year so i didn't do photography in general to justify using most of my lenses, so i narrowed to use TS for a while.

I do like that shift ability of the lens for stitching, once i did that i started to do more panos, i remember i did 3-4 panos only in the past with one of many lenses and i was scared to stitch and wait long and correct even if i use that RRS panoramic tools, but with TS, i do that without fair.

I still couldn't figure out about tilt function, i did test it, but on LCD or viewfinder i couldn't tell if i applied the tilt good enough, i tried with all degrees or say 1 degree for each frame, and i can only tell on computer monitor or if i zoom on LCD which i don't do much, so i hope i can find a better way to calculate the exact or best tilt degree to save my time rather than shoot many frames and pick the best one later.

Tareq wrote in post #17393430
I agree, and almost i didn't know how to use that large format until i bought this TS lens, later when i will use LF again i will know how to use it better way, good i have one large format that has almost all movements except front shift which is not a big deal for me.

With a view camera you can keep the back parallel with the object like a box or a building helping keep that perspective correct. Those cameras just give you a lot more control by the back being able to move to.

xpfloyd wrote in post #17392674
Agreed, live view and x10 zoom are essential for focus setting with tilt.

I think the fact the lens slows you down is what I like most about it when doing landscapes, it makes you stop and think and really work the shot

The lens slowing me down is why I'm really scared of it. That and the fact that it's all manual focus. I shoot a lot of real-estate but most of my shoots are quick jobs (20 shots, 1 hr). There is no way I would be able to use this lens in my situation. If I moved into nicer listings ($700-800k+) I think it would be something to strongly consider. I shoot very nice listings now but I don't currently feel like it's enough to justify the money spent.

One day...