Why a Tilt-Shift Lens may be in Your Future.
For many years, 35mm camera users have often been able to safely ignore the subject of camera movements. Not so for the large format folks, the relatively large film plane of a 4×5 view camera requires photographers to go to lengths even in the simplest images to get a deep depth-of-field, lengths that often include both camera movements and enormously tiny apertures (e.g., f/64). Our smaller film (or digital sensor) areas come along with a comparatively deeper depth of field. For better or worse, we may not wish to maintain our ignorance much longer.
If, like many photographers, you keep a close eye on gear announcements, you’ll have noticed the trend. While Canon had been selling three tilt-shift lenses for years, more recently they updated the 24mm tilt-shift with the ::amazon(“B001TDL2O0”,”Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II “):: (greatly improving it’s optical quality) and added a ::amazon(“Canon TS-E 17mm f/4L”,”17mm”):: to the lineup. In the same time frame, Nikon announced and began to ship ::amazon(“B0013BEEUW”,”24mm”)::, ::amazon(“B001BTG3NW”,”45mm”):: and ::amazon(“B001BTAZHM”,”85mm”)::. What’s behind this new excitement? (more…)