Canon® EOS Digital Photography Photo Workshop

6.9. TILT-AND-SHIFT LENSES

Imagine being able to take a lens in your hand and move it around until it gives you precisely the angle and view that you want, including the depth of field and emphasis on various foreground and background elements. This is essentially what the controls on tilt-and-shift lenses allow you to adjust — you can change various geometric optical factors common to and frustrating with other lenses. Have you ever tried to take a photo of a building and been frustrated by converging edges of walls that make it look angled instead of straight? Tilt-and-shift lenses correct that effect, working to realign images by changing trapezoidal angles on a focal plane, and, in some cases, virtually eliminating geometric aberrations and convergence — which is why architects, in particular, love them. The lenses use a very special, precision, floating optical system.

While often used in wide-angle types of shots, tilt-and-shift lenses actually come in a variety of focal lengths. Canon's are available in three focal lengths:

• TS-E 24mm f/3.5L

• TS-E 45mm f/2.8

• TS-E 90mm f/2.8

Canon tilt-and-shift lenses only offer manual focusing (which is why they do not feature an EF in their names) and you can tilt the axis of the lens's focal plane as well as shift perpendicular to the axis using small knobs on the lens (see 6-25). Essentially, they carry the simple effect you can get by tilting a wide-angle lens, eliminating the bending of the center line to a much greater extent to affect ...