Feeling Shifty

I had a brief chance to try out my newTS-E 24mm f/3.5<span style="color: #ff0000;"]LII - it's a very interesting lens. Even from my limited experience with it (less than 10 shots so far) I can tell it will involve a lot of learning and practice! It's a very manual lens - manual focus, manual mode on the camera (the lens movements affect the light meter, so you need to meter with the TS centered then retain those settings), and a whole bunch of knobs and switches.


At least I don't have to do an AF Microadjustment. [:P]


I only had about 10 minutes to wander around outside when I got in this morning, so I grabbed a couple of pictures of a building on the college campus next door. I slept in a little, so I didn't get into work and outside until after sunrise, meaning harsher light than I would have liked.


The first pair of shots compares the EF 24-105mm f/4<span style="color: #ff0000;"]L IS (left) to theTS-E 24mm f/3.5<span style="color: #ff0000;"]LII (right), with the TS-E shifted +8. The contrast is better with the TS-E (and it's sharper, too), the 'falling away' is improved, and the stairs at the bottom of the image are no longer smiling. (Yes, I should have use the hot-shoe bubble level!)


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After that, I tried a vertical shift +6/-6 pair of landscape-oriented shots that I stitched together.


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Sadly, that's all I had time for this morning. As I said, this lens will take a lot of practice but it's going to be a lot of fun learning to use it!

Hi John,


That's some great stuff. I can't believe what a wonderful job it does in the 2nd shot as compared to the 24-105mm, and what a surprise bonus to have increased contrast and sharpness too. That's going to be a great addition to your kit, especially for your up and coming trip next year.


Can't wait to learn more about this tilt/shift lens.


Rich

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Originally Posted by Richard Lane

That's some great stuff. I can't believe what a wonderful job it does in the 2nd shoot as compared to the 24-105mm, and what a surprise bonus to have increased contrast and sharpness too...............Can't wait to learn more about this tilt/shift lens.

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+1. I was surprised at how much more I liked the picture with the TS comared to the 24-105. Very interesting. Can't wait to see what you come up when you have more than 10 minutes at your disposal.[:)]

John -


Nice work! Did you use Live View to do that? I have the same lens, and found that the only way to get correct exposures is with Live View. Otherwise, it is usually underexposed. The shift feature is amazing and incredibly fun. The tilt feature is also great, but very tricky to get right. Here is an example, where I was able to get essentially infinite depth of field by tilting into the frame. The log in the foreground is only inches away from the lens (I also used a 5-stop solid ND to lengthen the exposure). 13 sec @ f/16, ISO 100.


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Wonderful shot, Jonathan! Was that the Singh-Ray Mor-Slo? I've been looking for a high-density ND in 82mm round (10 stops, to blur moving people from a scene), but can't find one. Probably would need a square filter for that (Lee Big Stopper, for example). I've looked at the Mor-Slo, but I'm not a fan of Singh-Ray's descriptions in general (I'd call them hype). I'm also considering a B+W 2-stop ND and a Slim CPL stacked.


I haven't played with tilt yet, but soon I hope.


I used Live View to focus (at 10x), but I metered with the tilt and shift at zero, and kept those settings in M mode after I applied shift. I didn't even try metering in Live View - I'l keep that in mind! Do you think that would affect a shifted panorama shot, if the exposures were different? (Although M mode would take care of that, I suppose.)


Thanks!


--John

Jonathan


Thats an awesome picture. With the depth I am seeing on my monitor in that picture, it would come alive printed off on the right printer.


Also..what did you mean about the exposure? Does it not work correct on the camera when using the tilt function, Or?? other times?


Neuro


I hope you like the new lens. You know we are all waiting to hear and see more from you about it.

Very cool lens!! Beautiful photo, Jon!


With all the new gear popping up around here lately, excuse me while I wipe the drool from my chin!!

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Originally Posted by HDNitehawk

Also..what did you mean about the exposure? Does it not work correct on the camera when using the tilt function, Or?? other times?

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No, it doesn't. As the guy who writes the Northlight reviews puts it, "The various effects of shifting and tilting the lens don't fit well for your camera's metering system, which is expecting nice well defined rays of light coming in at predictable angles from lenses mounted directly in front and coaxial with the mount." I found that out with shot number one, where I shifted the lens to the max and almost the whole review image was one big blinking highlight clip warning...

Beautiful shot Jonathan.., Very serene scene, indeed!


Denise, I think we both better log off now, before it costs us any more money!


Rich

Hey thanks. It takes a fair bit of time to focus correctly, but the results are worth it. For that shot I used the Singh-Ray 5-stop solid ND, in 4x6 format (yes their ads are a lot of hype, but their products are good). The only hiccup with the filter is that it throws off the white balance (everything comes out reddish) so you have to correct that afterwards. I am guessing that is a problem of ND filters in general, not just this one (?). Metering before applying tilt &amp; shift makes a lot of sense, especially if you are doing panoramas when you obviously have to maintain the same exposure. But I was happy to see that Live View works quite well for metering single shots. Another fun thing to do with tilt-shift lenses is create fake miniatures, where you blur both the foreground and background by tilting the lens up. The effect works best when you are looking down on something. Have fun! I'm looking forward to seeing more of your results.


Jonathan

I

It is a trick of the eye, for sure. When you blur both the foreground and background, you essentially take away the normal frame of reference that your brain uses to identify the correct scale. At least, that's what I'm assuming, but I'd be interested to hear other takes on it.


I haven't done many of these fake miniatures, but here is one I took of downtownCalgary. I think the 24 mm TSE is not the best tilt-shift lensto use for this, because of the wide angle. I had to crop this a fair bit to work.A 45 mm tilt-shift may be better. You can also create this effect in Photoshop with a normal lens... there are instructions on the web if you want to try.


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Have fun with your new lens John [Y]

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Originally Posted by Jonathan Huyer

It is a trick of the eye, for sure. When you blur both the foreground and background, you essentially take away the normal frame of reference that your brain uses to identify the correct scale. At least, that's what I'm assuming, but I'd be interested to hear other takes on it.

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I don't know it, but I'm guessing it has do do with the angle of the focus-plane. Normal lenses would have a focus-plane (The part that is sharp in the image) at right angles to the direction you're looking at. In other words, if you look at a car in the middle of your view, the back and foreground would be out of focus so to speak. This part can be adjusted by the tilt-shift lenses. I think that's why it looks unnatural and so it doesn't seem right in your mind... Anyway it's a weird, but very nice effect [:D]

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Originally Posted by Jan Paalman

Have fun with your new lens John [img]/emoticons/emotion-21.gif[/img]

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I am! Here's one from an early morning outing last week...



[url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/dr_brain/5190642361/lightbox/]http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5241/...65b54c33_z.jpg[/url]
EOS 5D Mark II, TS-E 24mm f/3.5<span style="color: #ff0000;"]L II, 1/2 s, f/8, ISO 100, +12 shift





When we first moved to Boston several years ago, we spent a few weeks living in corporate temporary housing in the building just to the left of the tower (the one with the verdigris-copper cornice).

This lens is really cool, John! How hard is it to learn how to use? Could a complete amateur ... Hmmm, maybe say someone like myself learn to use it properly??


Denise

It's not too hard - a complete amateur like myself is getting by with it. [:)]


Shift is pretty straightforward. Tilt is more challenging to master (especially focusing with tilt, but there are lots of tutorials online). Exposure is now pretty simple, thanks to Jonathan's comment that Live View yields a correct exposure (the metering sensor is affected by tilt and shift, but not the image sensor, and that's used for the exposure calculation in Live View).


It will take a lot more practice before I come anywhere even close to mastering the lens, though.

Speaking of tilt/sift, for those that have not seen it, this is purely amazing.


A total of 35, 000 imges were taken, edited and transposed to video. WOW!


Edit:
<h3 class="post-title entry-title"]"The Sandpit" - A short film by Aero Director, Sam O'Hare</h3>
<p class="post-title entry-title"]Original Music: composed by Human, co-written by Rosi Golan and Alex Wong.


[View:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk9EBOOAYiU]

Wow that was definitely a ton of work to make that film. It demonstrates well how the miniature effect works best when you are looking down on a subject... it's the best way to fool our brains I guess.


I was visiting family in Philadelphia last week and we stopped in at Valley Forge. These shots of the memorial arch show the difference a tilt/shift lens can make with architecture. Not hard to figure out which one is with the shift, and which is without.....


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Elmo,


Thanks for finding and sharing that video. That was epic work by the folks that made it.

My first thought when seeing the Sandpit, was "Neat. I've seen videos like a couple times before, and they're always neat".


My second thought was entirely off topic. It came when it got to the helicopter pad part. All I could see was "This is the place where I steal helicopters in Grand Theft Auto 4." I guess Rockstar got some parts of "Liberty City" pretty much perfect.


And a third thought edited in after watching the entire thing. The night parts are awesome. That is all.