Your Experience With A Nikon 24mm Tilt Shift lens

ianbarber

ianbarber

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Ian
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I am seriously thinking o getting a Nikon 24mm Tilt Shift lens as photographing tall buildings is becoming an issue with converging verticals.

Has anyone had any experience with them and if so what are your thoughts please.

Been trawling ebay but they do no seem to appear very much in the used section.

Ian
 
Meonshore has experience with them, I asked him about the 24/45/85 in the D800 thread. They don't come up very often, although Samyang have introduced their own 24mm T/S.
 
It's very easy to correct converging verticals in post processing. Have you tried that?

The unique thing that T&S lenses can do these days is depth-of-field control.
 
HoppyUK said:
It's very easy to correct converging verticals in post processing. Have you tried that?

The unique thing that T&S lenses can do these days is depth-of-field control.
Click to expand...

Lightroom 5 does a fairly good job but recently I have been photographing churches and they always appear to be leaning backwards which is annoying me.

I have never used a TS lens so not sure of their capabilities.
 
ianbarber said:
Lightroom 5 does a fairly good job but recently I have been photographing churches and they always appear to be leaning backwards which is annoying me.

I have never used a TS lens so not sure of their capabilities.
Click to expand...

Well vertical is vertical, however you do it. Though I find that anything more than quite modest correction of verticals just looks odd and the building appears top heavy. There quite quickly comes a point when you just have to let them converge.

T&S lenses have two functions - tilt and shift. The tilting is for depth-of-field control, that you can't do in any other way (though you can mimic reverse-Scheimpflug in post processing, ie miniature effect) and the shift is for straightening converging parallel lines like verticals. T&S lenses also tend to be very sharp.

Against that, you can sort verticals in post processing very effectively, T&S lenses are expensive, manual control only, and they don't zoom. Suggest hire one and see how you get on.
 
Laudrup is right - I do have the 3 tilt-shift lenses, and a decent amount of experience with the Nikkor 24mm and before that the Canon 24mm before I switched systems.

I use the 24mm to shoot large products (like 6ft+ tall and wide), exteriors and interiors, predominately for converging verticals. I use them less for the Scheimpflug tilt effect, although I do use tilt more with the 45mm and 85mm (smaller products but requiring large DOF). I have also used them to shift on a horizontal axis to give a hi-res wide image composed of two frames simply by using the two extremes of shift.

There is no doubt the 24mm is a cracking lens, very sharp, excellent optics and very well built. Mine was bought from new from Park cameras from the proceeds of the switch from Canon. The others were bought used - and as you say all come up rarely in the used market - it took me a very very long time to get a 45mm used. It is manual focus but the reality is that for the kind of work where you need a tilt-shift focussing is often one of the least time consuming parts of setting the shot up.

You can hire them, quite reasonably, but of course it depends on the frequency you use them and the urgency as to whether that is a viable route to take.

In the past I used to shoot my venue images for weddings with them taking a little more care when I had time, but now just use them for commercial work, having stopped shooting weddings. For weddings if I didn't have time then I did just shoot with a 24-70mm or 14-24mm and then sort out the verticals in PS. It does do it well enough for a wedding album, and again for that kind of product file size is rarely an issue - as you will lose some of the pixels as you correct the verticals in the computer.

The PC-E lens allows you to get the verticals right in camera - saving you some PP time, and crucially saves you all the pixels - so where image size is important - and in some cases my images are used at least 10-12ft wide on exhibition panels. That and the fact that is you are shooting an interior then you may need the full width of the frame for the image - and you may be unable to retreat further back to get a wider field of view if your back is against a wall :D

If I was selling my tilt-shifts then the 24mm would probably be the last to go as it is most versatile in use.....

Agree with Richard - I'd outlay on a hire and try it out before committing even on the lower priced Samyang.
 
Never used the Nikkor as I have Canon gear but my 24mm is wonderful, very sharp and a pleasure to use.
As others have said, converging verticals, incredible DOF control, selective focus, very easy stitching of panoramas.
What you do need is patience and a good tripod, they are not the easiest things to use and live view makes focussing a lot easier.
But as others have said go and hire one they are expensive are its a big expense if you decide its not for you.
 
If it is for use to correct converging verticals, then you only need the shift effect, and not the tilt (I think!!!) I believe the tilt function changes the focus plane through the image.

If that is the shift function that you need, the old manual focus Nikon lenses were available in 35mm and 28mm, and were the only option available to 35mm photographers, without resorting to the larger format cameras. These lenses can be picked up for a lot less money than the new pc-e versions (35mm circa £300).

I recently purchased a 35mm Nikon shift lens and have found it very useful for correcting verticals in camera. The problem I had with correcting verticals in software were always linked to not leaving enough room around the subject, leaving gaps in the corners or images cropped too tightly.
 
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