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 p.1 #6 · Tilt Lens Experience Help | |
I am a strong believer in using a tilt table either as a starting point for further focusing, or even as the method for the final tilt setting for a scene. Every real situation is going to depend on how "flat" the tilted image plane is that you are trying to shoot, and of course the tilted depth of field you have available to make your capture. And you are going to need to have a pretty good visulation of what tilted plane of focus you want, and realize that the better the scene fits on to a tilted plane of foucs, the better luck you will have with tilt.
For situations where you have the time and have a camera with good live view, go ahead and start off with a tilt based on your estimate or measurement of the camera to tilted plane of foucs distance, and then check and adjust focus to see how it works. You will often find that the table tilt was right on, or would have been good enough to capture things. Remember to consider the actual depth of field, and use live view with the depth of field preview to verify if things various things will look good.
As you develop more experience, or if you need to make the shot quickly, and if you are reasonable at estimating distances, you can set the tilt using a tilt table and an estimated distance to the desired tilted plane of focus, and set you focus using the focus distance scale and the 1/3rd into the image rule, and stop down a little, and you will likely do very well. Or if you want to verify focus, just setting it by bringing a single point of the image into focus can also work fine. It is usually best to choose your main subject if you can to focus on, or if it is a landscape that does not really have a main subject, just pick the center point of the image, as long as that point is fairly typical of being close to on the desired plane of focus.
One thing about the TS-E manual focus lenses is that the focus ring has a nice long scale and turns a long way to go over the full range of foucs. That means that you can easily set focus distance accurately from measured or estimated distance. And another feature that is on the lens is a very usable depth of field scale. This is something that really disapeared when auto focus came to lenses, but for the TS-E's, you can use the depth of field marks to choose a hyperfocal focus setting, or better estimate other depth of field ranges. When you tilt, the distance and depth of field scales are not fully accurate, but for the wide angle TS-E lenses and low tilt angles the scales are still pretty close, and can be very helpful.
The first time I really tried the tilt table method, I set the tilt and then looked through the viewfinder as I slowly focused. I was amazed to see three focus squares, all in a line along the desired plane of focus, all light up at the same time. I was so supprised that I tried it again and again, and it always worked as long as I did not try to adjust the foucs too fast. A tilt table is a pure geometry thing, and is actually never "wrong", so with good estimating and visualizing, it is very valuable.
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