Tilt Shift Lenses

[Lee Sacrey]

If someone has tilt shift lenses could they comment on what brand, what they use them for and how they like them? I am considering tilt shift as my next lens and would like some feedback.

[DonSchap]

Well, Hartblei has a tilt/shift for the SONY mount. The cost around $600 for the MC TS Arsat 35mm f/2.8.

Flyer_web.jpg

[inkista]

Hartblei's made several versions of their super-rotators. The Arsat ones are still relatively inexpensive on eBay, but some of the super-rotators are no longer cheap, alas. And the ones with Zeiss glass in them are astronomically priced and impossible to find.

I'm not 100% sure, but I'd check whether the cheap Arsat can actually rotate tilt and shift independently of each other. I think an older version had a fixed angle of 90° between tilt and shift. And one of the main attractions for me of the Super-Rotator I bought (aside from the price of $400 I found three years ago; I think now it goes for around $850) was its ability to rotate tilt and shift 360° independently of each other--even the Canon TS-Es couldn't do that back then (I think the new TS-E 17 and TS-E 24 II can do something similar now, not sure about the Nikon tilt-shifts).

Mine is the older knobby version. Big and fugly as hell.


And the glass is nothing to write home about--relatively low contrast, and a yellow color cast. But it is fun to use.


8° tilt up.

Your biggest problem finding one is that they're mostly sold on eBay. I know of only one online dealer that regularly offers them, and I have no idea how reputable they are.

Your second biggest problem is that the widest you're going to find is 35mm--which isn't particularly wide on a crop body. So, if you were planning on using it for architecture or faking miniature shots, it may not be as nice as you'd like. I got the 80 mostly because I was planning on using it for macro and landscape photography, to get a bit more DoF. But I do find myself often using it to make fake miniature shots--it's so much easier to reduce the DoF than to extend it. Mastering tilt will take you longer than you think it will. I don't use shift for perspective correction on architecture shots as often as I use it for composition; 80mm on a crop body is just too long to get good architecture shots.

[Lee Sacrey]

Thanks for the replies the info is very helpful. Has anyone heard of and/or tried a tilt shift adapter from Mirex?

[inkista]

I've heard of it, but know only a little about it. I think it's for using a medium format lens as a tilt-shift on an SLR. Which is what I suspect the Hartbleis really are at heart.