p.2 #17 · Your favorite 24 TSE I or II shots, please?
Show stoppers all and I guess there will be lots of folks who now dream of owning this lens
Would anyone care to share some of their technique on using the lens and and why they feel that these excellent results were achievable with the TSE and not with any other lens?
p.2 #19 · Your favorite 24 TSE I or II shots, please?
colinr wrote:
Would anyone care to share some of their technique on using the lens and and why they feel that these excellent results were achievable with the TSE and not with any other lens?
I'll take a stab at answering your question. I can only speak for my photos. First, the lens is incredibly sharp, has good colors and contrast and very little CA. To start with it's just a great 24mm prime lens. Then comes the T/S feature. I use shift way more than tilt, and usually use live view so I can see what the photo will look like. When I use tilt I will use live view to adjust the tilt and focus to get the foreground and background in focus. This is only needed when you are close to the plane you are trying to keep in focus. Here are some comments on my photos:
Pier at sunset: I don't think I used any tilt or shift on this picture. It's just like a 24mm prime.
Crystal Cove cottage: I used some shift to get the walls of the cottage vertical.
Prague Municipal House cafe: I don't think I used any tilt or shift on this picture. It's just like a 24mm prime. I did use a table to stabilize the camera due to the slow shutter speed. This photo shows the detail and contrast this lens is capable of.
Prague cathedral: There is no way I could have gotten this picture to look like this without a significant amount of shift (I guess I could have used LR to tilt the photo, but would have needed to crop significantly). With a normal 24mm prime the columns would be converging. I adjusted shift in LV so there is a minimum amount of convergence in the columns because I think that looks better than if the columns were perfectly vertical. I used a church pew to stabilize the camera due to slow shutter speeds.
Prague restaurant: I don't think I used any tilt or shift on this picture. It's just like a 24mm prime.
Black & white pier: I did use some shift, tripod and shutter release to get the horizontal and vertical pilings correctly positioned. The flare is well controlled.
p.2 #20 · Your favorite 24 TSE I or II shots, please?
colinr wrote:
Would anyone care to share some of their technique on using the lens and and why they feel that these excellent results were achievable with the TSE and not with any other lens?
My examples are P1 #20, I will speak to the use of tilt in shots 1,3,4
In these three examples the lens is roughly 6" from the rocks, beach and playa (the focal plane). The foreground is in focus from 8" in front of the camera lens to infinity in that flat plane. This is done by using the maximum tilt movement in the lens, 8 degrees downward tilt, and moving the focus and fine adjust the tilt to get everything in focus. It is possible to achieve much of the perspective correction of shift lens movement in post process, using software to "bend" lines (like the bridge towers) to straighten them, there is some inevitable loss of IQ to create new pixels in the stretched areas. It is very difficult to generate the tilt effect with software alone; to get a dof of 8" to infinity with this low pov. In the first example the top of the rock was selected to be in-focus while the ground, a few feet below this plane, was out of focus. Thus in practice, this viewpoint is unique, it cannot be replicated by use of a standard lens.
I am very impressed with the 24 TSE II in terms of lack of distortion and CA, it is an exceptionally clear and sharp optic.
Mike K
