Registered: Mar 01, 2002
Total Posts: 1810
Country: United States
Hartblei 35mm Super Rotator f2.8
The Hartblei 35mm Super Rotator lens has recently been introduced to the US through Kiev Camera and sells for $500. The Canon Tilt/Shift lenses are about $1100. The main attraction and unusual feature to this tilt/shift lens is that the tilt axis and shift axis are not coupled, and can be freely rotated in relationship to one another. This is a very qualitative review covering the description of the lens, how it works, and examples of the image quality relative to other Canon lenses. I have borrowed a friend’s Canon 24 TS-E for the purposes of comparison to another, more expensive tilt/shift lens. The Hartblei is available in Nikon or Canon mounting rings, is 10 cm tall and 8.5 cm in diameter. The glass elements are actually a bit smaller in diameter than the Canon 24 TS-E, but the aperture is a wide f2.8. The Hartblei is just a little bit heavier than the 24 TS-E, but not very much, the Canon have a pretty solid tilt/shift mechanism made out of sizeable chunk of solid aluminum.
For these tests I mounted it on a 1DmkII, a 1.3X crop sensor with RRS L bracket and Angle Finder C at 2.5X to aid in manual focus with a split screen focusing screen (Canon Ec-B). These focusing aids are a tremendous help in focusing as otherwise it is very difficult to discern optimum focus. In this review all of the original images are in this album.
http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592
If you want to see a larger version of any of these images go to this album and click on the appropriate image and adjust the image size to original. In order not to slow downloading of this post, I am not posting the larger images, get the links from the album.
Here is a picture of it with the camera on a Gitzo Explorer tripod, mounted to get a low perspective view of the deck: 6 degree tilt at 10-11 inches off the deck surface.
Here is the shot taken by this set up on a very rainy day, at reduced but larger size, f/11
(See Album: http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image # 2)
and the same shot with a Canon 24-70L f2.8 lens at 35mm to demonstrate the added dof of the tilt feature on the Hartblei
(See album: http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image #3)
with the Canon lens at f/11 the flowers of the middle orchid are sharp, but the pine needles on the near deck are not.
The Movements of the Hartblei Super Rotator design
Here are some close ups of the lens tilted 8 degrees downwards and shifted a maximum 10mm so you can easily see the movements.
The 4 adjustment rings on the lens all are different size and different textures so it is easy to tell them apart by feel when you are looking through the viewfinder. The focus ring is the big one with circular scallops on it near the outside of the lens. In these images the blue numbers are the feet scale, while on the other side of the lens are yellow numbers for the meters scale. The action of focus ring is really nice a smooth and very easy to fine adjust. The focus travel is quite far, but most of it covers a very small range near the closest focusing distance and the useful range from 2 meters to infinity is a very small travel. Overall I very much liked the action of the focus ring. On the second lens photo above you can see the DOF ring printed in yellow and the aperture ring on the inside of it in white. There are slight one stop indents from f2.8 to 22; it is very easy to move this ring by accident while you are messing with the tilt and shift adjustments.
Next come two rings with white lettering that say SHIFT is numbered 1-10 mm, and the ring closest to the camera that says TILT numbered in degrees 1-8 with small indents. These two rings obviously control the amount of Shift and Tilt. On mine the shift is quite stiff the last 2 mm of travel from 8 to 10mm, but the scalloped ring gives something to hold on to and twist. You can put screw on handles on to the Tilt and Shift rings to make it easer to turn them. I have put one on the tilt ring as it has no textured surface to grab hold of. You can see this knurled, thin handle near the bottom of the lens on the first shot with the tripod and at the bottom of the middle image. They stick out so much it makes the lens bulky to store so I only use one.
Here is the confusing part. See the silver tab on the top of the lens (at the 7 degree mark on the tilt ring) and the black tab between the shift and tilt rings? To change the tilt angle one pushes in the silver tab and freely rotates the entire lens. This disengages a spring loaded tab and allows the entire lens assembly to freely rotate in either direction 360 degrees. There are 18 stop tabs, in other words 20 degrees each. Thus one can move the tilt angle 0, 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 160, 180, etc. but not 90 degrees. Kind of odd, but usually the tilt axis is not very sensitive, I doubt if one could tell 80 from 100 degrees with the modest 8 degrees tilt max. When you rotate the tilt axis, the shift axis (the front of the lens) will rotate with it. The red dot in front of the silver tab in the last image is the index mark for the tilt, 8 degrees in this image. It is not normally seen as it is covered up by the lens at 0 tilt (the lens is tilted downwards here).
Now in the pics you can see the black tab just behind the shift ring, press that and hold it in and you can freely rotate the shift axis either direction 360 degrees (and beyond). There are 16 tabbed stops or every 22.5 degrees. Thus relative to the tilt one can rotate the shift axis 22.5, 45, 67.5, 90, 112.5, 135, 157.5, 180, etc degrees. Now turn the shift knob to dial in the amount of shift you want, 1-10 mm. It only shifts one direction; outwards, or wherever you have aligned outwards to be. If you want to shift the same amount (say 10mm) in both directions, you have to rotate the shift assembly 180 degrees for the next shot. The shift mechanism only shifts one way, so a 180 degree rotation of the shift axis is needed to shift both left and right (or up and down). The shift angle rotation is relative to the tilt axis, while the tilt angle axis is relative to the camera axis in landscape mode. There are red dots to line up the tilt and shift axis relative to the camera. Here is photo of the bottom of the lens showing the tilt rotation stops, and the lens shifted 10mm, and the knurled handle near the tilt locking tab.
Notice how far over the lens is at 10mm shift! What if you really want to set the tilt angle at exactly 90 degrees relative to the camera body in landscape orientation and not 80 or 100? In the image above you can see the EF lens mount ring is attached to the lens with 4 tiny screws. You can undo the 4 screws, and underneath you'll find there's a second set of holes, so you can put the mount back on at 10 degrees rotation to the original position. Thus you can set it up either to get 20 degree tilt detents including exactly horizontal, or get 20 degree detents including exactly vertical, but not both horizontal and vertical at the same time. Why isn't the tilt axis tabbed for 16 stops of 22.5 degrees like the shift?
Because the shift and tilt portions of the lens freely rotate with respect to each other and the camera body, there is no electrical connection for aperture like in the Canon TS-E lenses. In fact there is no electrical connection from the lens to the camera at all. With the Hartblei the camera doesn’t even know it has a lens on it, so everything is totally manual. Wires would tether both the tilt and shift rotations as it does in the Canon TS-E, limiting total lens rotation (both axes together) to 180 degrees. Even the EXIF is manual, as I used the voice annotation feature on the 1DmkII after each shot to document what lens, tilt setting, shift setting and f-stop were used.
Please read part II of this lens test
