Why not to buy a tilt-shift lens [Fuji 30/5.6].Tilt-shift isn't magic, what do the lenses really do 

For anyone considering buying Mr. Cooper's book, I can highly recommend it.

I do love that photography is all about limitations. Even a monorail large format camera with all the movements is limited by lens image circle coverage. Understanding the limitations and how to use them to your advantage, or not as the case may be, is part of the great adventure of photography. I have a Horseman 6x9 film camera which is sort of somewhere in between a full-on large format and the more limited 35mm and digital tilt-shift lenses, it's a nice compromise.

Oh boy! This takes me back to when I was five years old playing with my father's Thornton-Pickard 10 x 8 plate camera. He used it to take full school photographs with a horizontal shift tripod head so two plates could be arranged side by side to make a 20 x 8 inch panorama of all the school children together with their teachers - (printed one-to-one direct from the plates onto the photopaper !). A lot of careful retouching went into eliminating the join - all done by hand using specially sharpened pencils and erasers. All brass and wood with a set of brass barrel lenses and he even had the old 'mousetrap' shutters that were an absolute fascination to a young me (although he used a Compur shutter adapter). The lens panel was fully adjustable for tilt and shift and you tilted or yawed the whole camera on the tripod to get a measure of tilt on the rear film plane. I'd sit with my head under a double felt blanket and watch how the image changed as I adjusted the camera. Fascinating. Yes you can do the maths (look up 'Schiemflug Effect'' on Wikipedia - the technical term for tilt effect) and also 'circle of confusion' if you want to understand how depth of field works. But the best thing to do is get hold of a lens (maybe rent one for a weekend) and play with it. You can adjust it so everything looks sharp or as Keith points out adjust it so the image looks interesting. Two points, one - tilt and shift were originally simple methods of combating the limitations of the crude equipment that photographers had available in the early days. Two - even in these days of technical perfection and software whizz-giggery (that would leave my father thinking modern cameras worked by Voodoo) tilt and shift is still IMHO the best way to get around the limitations of parallel lens/film(sensor?) plane with a non square on subject. Great video Keith!

I read the title of this video and thought where is this going to? Knowing that you have also written a good educational book about tilt shift lenses. I myself have a Canon TSE 24mm and have had to delve deeply into how this lens actually works. Thanks to your book (I am now working on the last chapter) I have learned to use a number of aspects better, but also learned a few new possibilities. If anyone is in the situation where you have a tilt shift lens but don't use it enough due to unfamiliarity, I can certainly recommend Keith's book. But maybe also if you are already familiar with the possibilities of your lens (I was too) and want to learn more about it. You can see I'm excited about it 😀

If you want to try tilt photography on a budget, you can use a tilt adapter to turn manual SLR lenses into a tilt lens on a mirrorless camera. This can be found for around $30. Shift seems a little more involved to get into this way, with adapters starting around $100 and you need to look for lenses with a larger image circle than your camera supports

Thanks. Another advantage of shift for landscapes is to use it for panoramas. The new GF30mm with its tripod mount appears to be perfect for panos. Would be great to hear more about this during the upcoming test.

Since I came to TS lenses as 4x5 camera user, I really missed the movements available in large format, and, as I recall, have never used it for the "model world" effect, but did use it to really blow out the background in "portraiture" type shots... back to your video. ;-)

When things were largely shut down during the pandemic, I rented the Canon 24mm TS-E lens, and later the 17mm. I had fun with them, but decided that I would not use them enough to buy one. I found the 24mm more useful and easier for me to get my mind around. I did a pseudo-Ansel Adams shot with a fountain in my neighborhood standing in for a waterfall in Yosemite. The water was in sharp focus, as was a rock that was almost beneath the lens. I made a black-and-white print and framed it. I can see it from where I sit. I can envision using a slight amount of tilt for greater depth of field in some landscapes, but not worth thousands of dollars for me. I also made fun panoramas stitching 19 shots shifted every which way to make large circular pictures. Some extension tubes were delivered before I had to send the 24mm back, so I tried the tilt and got a lot in focus along a surface. I took interior shots for a realtor some years back. If I were still making a little money doing that, I would almost for sure buy a TS lens or two. As it is, if I get in the mood to play with one, I can rent it.

For the "miniature world" images, I find the Lens Baby "Composer Pro" mounts and the dedicated "Edge" lenses very useful and absolutely sufficient in terms of image quality (this genre isn't about the ultimate sharpness, anyway). Cost incomparably lower than T/S lenses. I bought mine after I saw Eugenio Recuenco use them to a great effect. What is most useful with these simple lens-mount contraptions is that you can tilt them independently in all directions (mounted on a joint), allowing you to be very specific about the plane of focus.

Keith, one point where the tilt can work much better than focus stacking, is the situation where you might have movement in the scene that would be, at least distracting, with kind of "ghost images"; I am thinking of people in the scene, that you have no control over, or trees, even branches, blowing in the wind...in these cases, with tilt, you can often eliminate the motion entirely, or, even use "proper" motion blur creatively, as in a bit of nice blur in moving grasses, or water droplets with just the amount of movement that you want... or, so I have found.

Tilt and shift lenses are great for stitching, removing reflections (of yourself), product photography for depth and perspective control, architecture inside and out and lastly for stupid crazy minimum DOF on portraiture - and a zillion other things too. You can focus stack with them too.

I use my ts all the time for increasing depth of field. It works perfect.

The kind of topic that would greatly benefit an illustration.

Recently bought a Tilt/Shift adapter and for some reason the controls feel natural as if I have used them before, but never have I used a tilt/shift lens. I considered buying a cheap T/S just to try, however as I still had my Contax lenses from my film days I bought an adapter and have been practising using it.

“Who the heck is this guy to tell me….oh he literally wrote the book” lol

Having worked for decades with a large-format view camera, the tilts and shifts are on the camera, so all your lenses are tilt-shift lenses. Of course, circle of definition was an important consideration in the choice of a lens, and this was published and known to all photographers using this equipment. The use of these adjustments becomes so second nature that using a fixed camera without them feels constrained and hard to use. I would say that most pictures I would take with this equipment would use some degree of adjustment - though it would often be slight. If you are using a big heavy camera lens shift is often used just to fine-tune your framing and composition, though I would not recommend that approach with these specialty lenses on DSLRs. Of course with the large film formats, we would have intrinsically greater depth of field issues, so Schiempflug corrections were very frequently needed, but as Keith indicates it is not the panacea or magic bullet some people seem to believe. Compared with using the view camera, I find tilt-shift lenses hareder to use, but they do afford that extra bit of control over your subject that Large-Format photographers are used to and which frustrates them when using rigid cameras.Fixing converging verticals for architectural photography is an obvious one, and I find it far more satisfactory than simply saying you're going to fix it in post - which requires you to frame very wide or you run out of room trying to fix the geometry.

Hi Keith, very helpful and „come to the ground“ video! Thank you

A used 45mm TSE, bought initially for panorama, has become my second most favourite lens. It is as sharp as my 100 macro and forces me to really assess my thoughts before shooting. Too bad Canon dumped the newer 90mm EF model before many were in circulation. The parallel or perpendicular plane settings is very appealing.

When i try to explain the scheimpflug principle to other photographers, i tell them that if you tilt the lens you change from depth of field to "hight of field" (if there is such a word ;-))

Shift, with tilt, in the case of trees, or any kind of vertical structure that repeats, like a grove of trees, a corn field from certain angles, as in your wall shot, can be rendered with an amount of convergence that you can control (to some extent) and achieve a plane of focus that works, while maintaining a shutter speed that prevents unintended motion "artifacts"... In thinking about your nicely thought-out point about the idea of the thin focus plane rendering flower blooms out of focus, while the stems are sharp, one of those "whoops!" moments, that one could use the effect to get a nice softening of the stems, possibly the 'dirt', while having the softening lead the viewer's eye quite naturally to the highlight of the image... just a thought. Keith, you've done a very nice "encapsulation" of a relatively complex, and often misunderstood, subject! [ sorry to be such a chatterbox, but TS has been, for me, a real pleasure to use in so many cases]

I love this video, it's been a really long time since I last used a tilt lens. I'm thinking of getting this fantastic Chinese toy, that's also fantastically cheap. Don't know how they do it, but I'm a big fan of TTartisan, often catering so diligently to a niche of a niche of a niche. They love what they do. Why NOT buy one? I can't think of any reason, tnx for demonstrating that :). There are so many ways to get a poignant visual effect out of these, but I do agree nothing's magic until you tell it to be magic.

WOW, Thanks Mr. Cooper, yes, timely for me!

The main issue is standard modern tilt shift lenses only allow 10mm shift and 8.5° tilt, whereas if you adapt a 6x7 lens to a FF camera you can get over 20mm and 10°, or with a full view camera even more. Due to the scheimpflug principle a the additional tilt allows an exponentially steeper focal plane angle for getting that infinite DOF

I really like technical aspects of stuff. I know that i would spend a lot of time learning how to use a tilt/shift lens, but then not get around to using it. I'm going to satisfy myself with software for the few times tilt or shift would be useful to me. Sigh.

If not consider the focal panel, but the depth of field, then the tilt will make the close focus point narrower depth of field while the far focus point widerdepth of field, that's how landscape photographers use the tilt to take close-far type of scene. Because if there is no tilt, even f16 or f22 can't give far away mountain a clean enough focus.

Great video, and you have a lot of knowledge. I own all three Canon T/S lenses from the 1990's era. I've had them since the late 1990's. I use Shift a lot on architecture and travel photography. Shift helps me use all my pixels by lifting up objects, or lowering horizons, and filling the frame efficiently. No questions here. Now, my questions concerning Tilt. 1. You say that Tilt is only a very thin and flat 'surface plane' effect. Let's say like a thin sheet of glass against a wall. Okay, if this plane of glass is 1mm thick at f/2.8. As you stop-down towards say f/11, wound not this plane of glass get thicker as you stop-down? In your example about Tilt alligned along the ground, with flowers (above) out of focus, what role does stopping-down do to increase DOF along the plane-of-focus? 2. On my vacation: The Grand Canyon in Arizona, USA. I'm going to revisit the Grand Canyon again with my T/S lenses again. On the last visit, I used only Shift (lowered) to lift the horizon up to rule-of-thirds. My T/S lenses came configured with Tilt and Shift on perpendicular axises. I may remove the screws and allign both Tilt and Shift to the same axis. I will return to Grand Canyon with T&S on the same axis this visit. I will stand above the Grand Canyon and again use Shift to lift up the horizon. Now, what happens when also I Tilt down, say to 6-8 degrees in order to allign the plain-of-focus into the canyon? The Grand Canyon is many hundreds of feet deep. If I Tilt 6-8 degrees down (into canyon) and continue to stop-down to f/11, will stopping-down deepen (thicken) the plane-of-focus, down into the depths of the Canyon? Stopping-down must have some effect on DOF. And DOF is along the plane-of-focus. My intuition of your response, after your video, is that the Tilt plane-of-focus will affect only the highest tips of rocks sticking upwards from the canyon floor. Btw, my Canon 24mm T/S (version 1) is not exactly a sharp lens. I mean, it needs stopped-down to at least f/11 with 2-sec mirror lockup with a remote switch just to get 'okay' sharpness. My Canon 45mm T/S and 90mm T/S (both version 1) are much sharper than the 24mm. I doubt any technique that perspective s/w can simulate that Shift down (fall) into the Canyon and lift the horizon up and fill the full 35mm frame. I find that Shift up (rise), for architecture, I can use a super wide-angle zoom (leveled) and crop out the unwanted zones - this can supplement a T/S lens in this way (but with a huge loss of MP). Anyway, I appreciate your thoughts and welcome your advice. Cheers from Louisiana

So -- I'm considering to get the TTArtisan 100mm 2x magnification tilt-shift macro lens, to get more control over depth of field when shooting macro and close-up. However I'm gathering from your video that it will not give a lot of actual tilt at macro distances? I do have the excellent Laowa 65mm 2x macro lens so I'm comfortable with all-manual macro shooting at this level of magnification but this would be my first foray into tilt-shift and what I'm hoping to achieve is that I can put the plane of focus more parellel to items that are not parallel to the sensor, having to do less focus stacking, and having more control over what things directly behind the subject are sharp or not. So I can shoot for instance a flower petal that is angled towards the camera sharp all the way, but not necessarily have the petals below or behind it equally sharp. That is my aim but now I'm wondering how achievable that would be with a 100mm lens at 1x or more magnification and up to 8 degrees of tilt, on an APS-C body! Do you have any words of wisdom?

Good video. Only used tillt on things close to the camera in landscape or in product photo. Usually I use shift in woodland. Never used focus stacking but I will test it.

Thanks

To have full use of tilt and shift, you need to use a view Camera that also can move the backside.

On large format I see this used all the time. I guess it is because you have a shallow DOF? So tilt helps some?

Would love to save money on the new GF30 if they simply left the tilt oout of the formula. Ive used canon TS and many others. Canon specifically has terrible edge distortion and sharpness. The gf30 is insane and actually good for 30mm shifts for 650MP GFX 100s 3-shots

great video, again. Thank you! I wonder if cheap shift adaptors oder TLT Rokr can be an alternative to a real shift lens. I'm only interested in shift and less distortion for using wide angle in real estate panoramas (often in very small rooms) What are your thoughts?

I am one of those people thinking of buying a tilt shift lense to play around. What focal length would you recommend as a decent all arounder?

I want title lenses for micro four thirds. Designed for, not APS-C or larger with the MFT mount. I'm thinking that my days carrying the Lumix S1R and TS-E lenses are pretty numbered. The new G9 with 100 megapixels and lenses with 8mm or more shift would be killers for landscapes and architecture. Might even make you rethink the GFX.

Hi. As a product and drink photographer, will a tilt shift lens help me get a close up shot of a drink in focus without the need for stacking? Photo stacking often won’t work with drinks due to moving components such as ice, bubbles, condensation. Thanks

LOL I saw your comment on that tilt-shift lens video. It got pinned so he may have revised his information about the DOF.

Great content!

you could demonstrate with your 4x5^^

Why not get the Canon 24 TS-E for the Fuji GFX, and save $2-3k?

Hi Keith. I'm looking at buying your book, does it have any diagrams that would help me understand the focus plane movement with tilt? Thanks

Great video, thanks a lot. Follow-up question: Am I correct that I can use a depth-of-field calculator and use that number for the sharpness depth as well for the shifted lens, thus giving me an idea how high thick a (flat) object can be to be perfectly sharp? I am thinking about using a 50 mm Nikon lens adapted on the Kipon Tilt and Shift adapter for Fuji FX mount. Aim is to get sharp product photos of objects about 25 cm x 25 cm and 12 cm thick (high, so to speak). Should that work out fine?

brilliant

Are you not aware of tilt-shift adapters?

i don't like the two GFX shift jumbos: way too big, heavy, slow and too expensive - nothing I nearly can do with Canon TS-E and Laowa Lenses. And: their concept is not completed - why does the 110 mm lets miss the socket??? and gives mo possibility to mont one... so sad - and just in the case one could argue with the better cover sharpness: particularly when you mount panoramic pictures you won't have to go to the extremes, just take one more photo within the -at all - long taking process. again: 4.500 bucks;-((

Maybe the microphone should be on your left side 😉

We should not buy camera and lens. We should borrow from somebody.