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Archive 2008 · 45mm TS-E

Ben Horne
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p.1 #1 · 45mm TS-E

I picked up a 45mm TS-E lens here on FM for use on a trip. I LOVE this lens. Now that I am use to the lens movements, I find it difficult to use "regular" lenses now. I have learned several things about this lens that I thought I should pass on. First of all, you really NEED the angle finder C in order to tell if you have the lens properly setup. Otherwise, it is difficult to tell in the viewfinder if you have the lens tilted and focused properly. Here is a test shot yesterday with the 45mm TS-E tripod mounted, tilted almost to the max. I believe the shot was taken at f/8. With a normal lens, you'd get only a small percentage of the shot in focus at f/8.

Sorry for the huge file size. This image does not compress well.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Here is another example of nearly full tilt. The cliff face in the foreground is only a few inches from the camera. This sort of sharpness and focus would be impossible with a normal lens, even stopped down all the way.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Of course, if you use the lens the opposite of how it is meant to be used, you can have a super shallow DOF as a result of the tilted plane of focus.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

It is best to meter the scene before tilting the lens. Otherwise, it will be off by about a stop. Shifting does not seem to have quite the same issue.

I find it easiest to focus on the foreground, then tilt for the background focus. If you use an angle finder, it is much easier to fine tune the setttings, especially if you will be shooting anywhere near wide open.

I was well aware that Chromatic Aberration would be an issue with this lens. It's quite a bit more than I thought, but it also isn't that difficult to get rid of. You can NOT use the CA fix in Adobe Camera Raw since this is a different style of CA. On a normal lens, you will find that the red channel is slightly larger yet centered. As a result, the further you get from the center of the lens, the stronger the CA will be. Photoshop can essentially shrink the red channel, yet keep the center aligned, and you will have proper alignment.

With a TS-E lens, your image circle is huge, and depending on how you have the lens tilted/shifted, you will see only a portion of the edge of the image circle. This means that the CA is not radial, and centered in the middle of the photo. With a little bit of experimentation, I found that if you shrink the red channel to 99.92% of it's original size (on the 1DsmkII), you will now have a red channel that is the same size as the blue and green channels. Then you just have to align it. In the shot with the rocks on the beach, I set the height to 99.92%, left the width at 100% (uncheck the constrain proportions box) since there were not any red channel alignment issues on the other axis. Here is a 100% crop before and after the red channel shrinkage.

This image is copyrighted by the owner

The magic number will vary based on which lens, which camera, and how far you have the lens tilted. It's not too difficult to experiment to find the proper number.

I also found that 99.92% worked for correct CA on this lens that results from shifting to the max.

My main purpose for buying this lens was allowing compositional changes when shooting level with a panorama setup. However, the usefulness extends well beyond that. I'm really looking forward to shooting wildflowers in the desert this spring. After owning this lens, I really would like to get the 90mm TS-E.

Edited on Feb 25, 2008 at 06:57 PM

Feb 25, 2008 at 06:52 PM

PasiM
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p.1 #2 · 45mm TS-E

Now this is how you share information!
Thanks, very enlightin!

Feb 25, 2008 at 06:59 PM

amirm
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p.1 #3 · 45mm TS-E

Wow, that is great tutorial on how to manage CA with this lens. Thanks for posting it!

Feb 25, 2008 at 07:02 PM

Andi Dietrich
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p.1 #4 · 45mm TS-E

Hope you dont take offense by mentioning it.
People who do want to use several TS lenses could get one TS mirex adapter and use several Hasselblad lenses with it.
Most Zeiss lenses have very little CA and they are about as sharp as a good Canon lens. You could use them also on other camera systems, like on a Nikon or anything which mounts on a T2

Feb 25, 2008 at 07:37 PM

Duncan Gibson
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p.1 #5 · 45mm TS-E

Yes there are other TS options, but the cost of a Hasselblad digital back is prohibitive. Nikon has finally come out with some Tilt Shifts too.

Feb 25, 2008 at 07:44 PM

Andi Dietrich
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p.1 #6 · 45mm TS-E

You can actually use Hasselblad and Mamiya lenses on a canon camera with the Mirex adapter, I should have mentioned it above. No MF back required and alltogether probably also less expensive

www.mirex-adapter.de

Feb 25, 2008 at 07:57 PM

Ariel Bravy
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p.1 #7 · 45mm TS-E

That was excellent information. Thank you for sharing!

Feb 25, 2008 at 08:07 PM

johnnydanger
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p.1 #8 · 45mm TS-E

The 90mm T/S is a sweet sweet lens. By far the sharpest and best performing of the 3 Canon T/S lenses. Albeit with a slightly odd older design in which the tilt control is reversed from the other T/S lenses.

In any case, they are sweet lenses. I'm thinking of only taking my 3 T/S lenses on a 3 week Japan trip that's coming up, that's how much I like them!

Feb 25, 2008 at 08:08 PM

Anden
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p.1 #9 · 45mm TS-E

The 90 is a great lens. Sold it and miss it. Will get one again when I go back to full frame. I am waiting for my 24 ts-e to arrive. The 45 does no look to bad either :-)

90 @ 2.8 on a 5D

This image is copyrighted by the owner

Feb 25, 2008 at 08:33 PM

BubbaJon
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p.1 #10 · 45mm TS-E

PasiM wrote:
Now this is how you share information!
Thanks, very enlightin!
Yea buddy! I sure picked up a couple of new things from that one. Here's one for you - a TC on the TS lenses will "stretch" the shift. If you use shift for pano work you can get some pretty wide ones without having to dip into the "not recommended" zone past 8mm (on the TS-E 24 anyway

Regards,
Jon

Feb 25, 2008 at 08:59 PM

mh2000
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p.1 #11 · 45mm TS-E

Anden, great shot to show off how beautiful the lens is! (no matter how you did it, this shot would look nowhere near as nice using the 100 USM macro).

Feb 25, 2008 at 10:14 PM

Samuli Vahonen
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p.1 #12 · 45mm TS-E

BubbaJon wrote:
PasiM wrote:
Now this is how you share information!
Thanks, very enlightin!
Yea buddy! I sure picked up a couple of new things from that one. Here's one for you - a TC on the TS lenses will "stretch" the shift. If you use shift for pano work you can get some pretty wide ones without having to dip into the "not recommended" zone past 8mm (on the TS-E 24 anyway

Regards,
Jon
With a 1.6x crop camera you will get 3:1 ratio panoramas where every pixel is as sharp as in original image. If combining stitching panorama from vertical images image ratio will be 1.7:1. On full frame the ratios will be 2.2:1 and 1.3:1. Illustration of image circle and shift movements with Canon TS-E lenses (further explanation can be read from my Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8 page):

Examples with 1.6x crop camera (first horizontal photos stitched, second vertical photos stitched):

Edited on Feb 25, 2008 at 10:45 PM

Feb 25, 2008 at 10:42 PM

Ben Horne
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p.1 #13 · 45mm TS-E

Great info on the TC. I'll have to look into that.

Feb 25, 2008 at 11:03 PM

Mark Schapper
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p.1 #14 · 45mm TS-E

Thanks for the CA info. I hafta try it asap. I have all three TS/es and your info will be great - I hope - for the 24, which has murderous CA on full tilt and shift. (The 90 is pretty well CA free). This is on full frame (1DsII)

Once you get used to these, it's hard to go back to the standard lenses. At exhibition print size you can see the difference easily - especially with the 90.

Mark

Feb 26, 2008 at 01:23 AM

espressogeek
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p.1 #15 · 45mm TS-E

The 45 with vertical stitch looks pretty good. Maybe something to consider. I have the 90 ts-e right now on my 1.6 camera and its pretty good but it is a bit long.

The only thing I have against the shift adapters for hassey is the lenses for wide angle are not that plentiful at the wide end. Can you imagine a 40mm distagon for hasselblad mounted on the front of a rebel?

Edited on Feb 26, 2008 at 01:45 AM

Feb 26, 2008 at 01:41 AM

mh2000
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p.1 #16 · 45mm TS-E

90 is way too long for a cropped camera IMO... 45 is quite useful. good CA fix tip.

Feb 26, 2008 at 04:25 AM

rico
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p.1 #17 · 45mm TS-E

Ben,

Thanks for the great write-up.

The 45mm FL sure is handy, even if the 90 TS-E gets all the praise for sharpness.

Feb 26, 2008 at 08:38 AM

keith_cooper
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p.1 #18 · 45mm TS-E

Thanks for your thoughts, however I'd offer an alternative solution to fixing the the CA if you know how much shift was used.

The CA in the image is perfectly normal image CA, but you are viewing an off centre part of the lens' image circle.

So you are right in saying that the simple application of the CA tool in PS wont fix the problem, however by extending the canvas to bring the optical centre to the centre of the canvas, you can then use normal CA tools. Note though that much use of tilt makes the whole process much less amenable to simple fixes.

If it helps I've got examples of the canvas extension at http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/tilt_and_shift_ts-e.html

Of course, this does rely on me noting down the amount of shift -- ah! at last, a use for that sound recording feature in my 1Ds/1Ds3 I've never ever used :-)

Feb 26, 2008 at 09:34 AM

Rajan Parrikar
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p.1 #19 · 45mm TS-E

I have just put in an order for this lens. Would DxO Optics
software be able to fix the CA of this lens automatically (like
it does for other lenses)?

Feb 26, 2008 at 10:08 AM

keith_cooper
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p.1 #20 · 45mm TS-E

No, DxO does not support this at all (I've chatted to some of their people about it when I was doing some beta testing in the past)

The lens supplies no data at all concerning the amount of shift/tilt

With the shift and focus info they could correct this, but any tilt and the calculations go way beyond what the normal DxO correction code currently deals with.

One of the things I heard about a potential update to the T/S lenses was that EXIF data would have lens settings included - given that Canon now includes lens correction in DPP, the increased resolution of sensors and that sales of T/S lenses have been rising (note the new Nikon T/S)... I'd rate an update to this line of old EF lenses as more likely than many of the lens related rumours I get sent ;-)

Feb 26, 2008 at 11:37 AM

Ben Horne
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p.1 #21 · 45mm TS-E

Which CA software did you use to get rid of the CA after you enlarged the canvas? I usually use the CA correction built into ACR, but that's not going to be possible if you need to enlarge the canvas first. Are you using another tool in PS, or are you using DXO after the canvas has been enlarged?

Feb 26, 2008 at 02:57 PM

keith_cooper
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p.1 #22 · 45mm TS-E

I used Filter>Distort>Lens Correction

It's also where I'll fine tune perspective if it's not quite what I want after using shift

It would be nice to do it at the raw processing stage, but the filter works well enough

Edited on Feb 26, 2008 at 03:34 PM

Feb 26, 2008 at 03:33 PM

jamesf99
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p.1 #23 · 45mm TS-E

Ben Horne wrote:
I picked up a 45mm TS-E lens here on FM for use on a trip. I LOVE this lens. Now that I am use to the lens movements, I find it difficult to use "regular" lenses now. I have learned several things about this lens that I thought I should pass on. First of all, you really NEED the angle finder C in order to tell if you have the lens properly setup. Otherwise, it is difficult to tell in the viewfinder if you have the lens tilted and focused properly. Here is a test shot yesterday with the 45mm TS-E tripod mounted, tilted almost to the max. I believe the shot was taken at f/8. With a normal lens, you'd get only a small percentage of the shot in focus at f/8.

I was well aware that Chromatic Aberration would be an issue with this lens. It's quite a bit more than I thought, but it also isn't that difficult to get rid of. You can NOT use the CA fix in Adobe Camera Raw since this is a different style of CA. On a normal lens, you will find that the red channel is slightly larger yet centered. As a result, the further you get from the center of the lens, the stronger the CA will be. Photoshop can essentially shrink the red channel, yet keep the center aligned, and you will have proper alignment.

With a TS-E lens, your image circle is huge, and depending on how you have the lens tilted/shifted, you will see only a portion of the edge of the image circle. This means that the CA is not radial, and centered in the middle of the photo. With a little bit of experimentation, I found that if you shrink the red channel to 99.92% of it's original size (on the 1DsmkII), you will now have a red channel that is the same size as the blue and green channels. Then you just have to align it. In the shot with the rocks on the beach, I set the height to 99.92%, left the width at 100% (uncheck the constrain proportions box) since there were not any red channel alignment issues on the other axis. Here is a 100% crop before and after the red channel shrinkage.
.......

I also found that 99.92% worked for correct CA on this lens that results from shifting to the max..............

OK, someone has to ask the dumb questions so it's my turn today.

Feb 26, 2008 at 03:36 PM

Ben Horne
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p.1 #24 · 45mm TS-E

jamesf99 wrote:
Ben Horne wrote:
I picked up a 45mm TS-E lens here on FM for use on a trip. I LOVE this lens. Now that I am use to the lens movements, I find it difficult to use "regular" lenses now. I have learned several things about this lens that I thought I should pass on. First of all, you really NEED the angle finder C in order to tell if you have the lens properly setup. Otherwise, it is difficult to tell in the viewfinder if you have the lens tilted and focused properly. Here is a test shot yesterday with the 45mm TS-E tripod mounted, tilted almost to the max. I believe the shot was taken at f/8. With a normal lens, you'd get only a small percentage of the shot in focus at f/8.

I was well aware that Chromatic Aberration would be an issue with this lens. It's quite a bit more than I thought, but it also isn't that difficult to get rid of. You can NOT use the CA fix in Adobe Camera Raw since this is a different style of CA. On a normal lens, you will find that the red channel is slightly larger yet centered. As a result, the further you get from the center of the lens, the stronger the CA will be. Photoshop can essentially shrink the red channel, yet keep the center aligned, and you will have proper alignment.

With a TS-E lens, your image circle is huge, and depending on how you have the lens tilted/shifted, you will see only a portion of the edge of the image circle. This means that the CA is not radial, and centered in the middle of the photo. With a little bit of experimentation, I found that if you shrink the red channel to 99.92% of it's original size (on the 1DsmkII), you will now have a red channel that is the same size as the blue and green channels. Then you just have to align it. In the shot with the rocks on the beach, I set the height to 99.92%, left the width at 100% (uncheck the constrain proportions box) since there were not any red channel alignment issues on the other axis. Here is a 100% crop before and after the red channel shrinkage.
.......

I also found that 99.92% worked for correct CA on this lens that results from shifting to the max..............

OK, someone has to ask the dumb questions so it's my turn today.

I'm not sure what you mean by shrinking the red channel so can you explain that in more detail? I've used the 24,45,90 for years now and have never done that so if I'm missing something that obviously appears to improve things, I'd like to understand it. I'm also quite familiar with PS, but as we all know, there are 100 ways to do the same thing...

thanks

Load a photo from one of these lenses that has some severe CA. Next, look at the channels pallet. Click the blue channel, then the green channel, then the red channel. You'll see that the blue and green channels are properly aligned, but the red channel is off. The light in the red spectrum does not focus properly, causing the info on the red channel to be slightly larger. This is why you see the color fringing --- it is because not all the colors are focusing on the same plane. By shrinking the red channel, now the color channels are all the same size. When aligned properly, the vast majority of the CA will be fixed.

Feb 26, 2008 at 03:43 PM

Ben Horne
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p.1 #25 · 45mm TS-E

keith_cooper wrote:
I used Filter>Distort>Lens Correction

It's also where I'll fine tune perspective if it's not quite what I want after using shift

It would be nice to do it at the raw processing stage, but the filter works well enough

Thanks for the info. I'll give it a try later today when I'm home from work.

Feb 26, 2008 at 03:44 PM


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