Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L

Ranger Kevin wrote in post #17223253
Wow, so far this lens is a lot of fun to use, I love the creative possibilities.
Unfortunately I did not have a lot of time to play with it outside, but the next holidays are coming...

Here is one I took last Saturday of the beautiful sunrise in my Hometown... slightly shifted upwards and two exposures blended together. Unfortunately I did not have much time to take the shot, as I was on my way to Uni.

I will have to try some Panoramas with this thing... any tips on how to best deal with the errors in the panoram that you might get when not using one of those special "back-shift-adapters"?

Beautiful shot!

For the shift panos, the distortion happens at maximum shift and is most apparent with closest subjects; avoid being too close to the subject and it will be fine.

I have a shift pano which I hate the way it looks like but is a good example of what I am talking about; the background looks OK but the motorcycles are completely distorted.

Watson Island Ducati Pano by ddk632, on Flickr

I'm sure someone will have better advice than me, though

Try to shift in both orientations, sometimes one orientation will give you a better perspective, sometimes i like the shift in portraits orientation more than the shift in landscape orientation, also with that landscape orientation you don't need to shift maximum sometimes.

Good luck and waiting to see more shots from you by this lens.

Well, the Pano with the bikes is not that bad though david, I do not find the distortion all that off-putting (of course, if you can get it straight, it is even better). Nice lighting, though.

What I have run into with the shifted panos is more a kind of "ghosting", here is an example:

What software are you using for the photo merge?

Kevin, for best result the front element of the lens should be in same position, not a camera. Its difficult without transverse rail or (better) special lens-tripod mount.

For Tilt/ Shift Panos that correct for parallax
you could try this technique, which I think
TomS is referring to.
A camera rail or L- Plate is needed.

http://www.outbackphot​o.com/workflow/wf_58/e​ssay.html

The OP was specifically asking about how to deal with the distortion without the special hardware.

That being said, if one were to go for a hardware solution, it makes much more sense to get the special adapter for the lens that mounts to your tripod vs. the focusing rail; the focusing rail is really meant for a whole other purpose, and still leaves some room for error (albeit not a lot) since you manually have to move the camera on the focusing rail in the opposite direction of shift in order to compensate for the parallax distortion.

With the tripod/lens mounted solution posted a page or two back, there is no need. Just shift and shoot. Much more elegant.

http://www.facebook.co​m/Gonjoo.TSE.rear.shif​t.adapter

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@ddk632: Unfortunately no PS, I mainly use GIMP, which is what I used to stitch this particular photo with.
I used the "Difference" view to line up the layers as good as possible, and then used a layer mask and a soft brush to blend the edges together.

I also have HUGIN as a Panorama-software, but I have not figured out how to use that properly yet, it is very different to my old photomatrix. Also I do not know if it can be used for this kind of panoramas...

Yes, I am aware of these adapters, I already contacted the gonjoo-Guy, but I am not sure how often I will have to take panorama-shots, so it depends on the price if I consider buying that.

EDIT: I just thought of a solution for this particular photo, I didn't even think about using the stamp tool to clone some of the nearby, "intact" grass to cover up the jitter effect caused by the stitching.
That is probably the easiest solution, but of course it does only work with cloneable foregrounds...
Sometimes, you don't even think about the easiest solutions
But it would still be interesting to know how you correct that if you have a foregroung where you cannot just stamp it

Stamping/cloning will work on this grass, but is a PITA in some cases.

I've got a shift pano of a sunset I still haven't processed because it has power lines in it and they don't line up! The sunset lines up, but the power lines don't. Trying to clone out power lines across the length of a shift pano with a sunset in the background has proven, well, daunting!

If it doesn't line up properly (and can't be, like my sunset with power lines) and can't easily be stamped, I am not aware of how to fix that with software. Doesn't mean it isn't possible, I am just personally unaware of any solution.

Depending on what's in the scene you may be able to manually stitch it in different spots where you'd have less parallax. I've got another example (posted a few pages back, "Rickenbacker Night Shift Pnorama" where even with Photoshop I had to manually merge because the photo merge tool did some crazy stuff to it. I was able to achieve a manual result that was better. So even PS isn't always saving you here.

Avyway, hope that's some food for thought.

I'll admit I have become somewhat addicted to shooting 2-shot shift panoramas... An adapter will end up getting used more than you think.

I really need this lens - been trying to offload my TS-E 24 II for months to fund it but its not happening
Stuck on a 9 by 5 mile rock properly reduces the audience for selling kit.

I went on a little foto-tour in Cologne tonight, of course the TS-E was in the bag:

I know that feeling of "just because you can"

For me it died down after the first few months of owning this amazing lens. As a result, I rarely use tilt. Often I will take a shot with tilt "for effect" and a "normal" shot and the normal shot ends up being the keeper these days.

That being said, I am still very much learning how to properly use tilt to actually increase focus but it's proven a challenge. Not to mention, I don't get out enough to practice.