Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda

New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site

New Feature: SMS Notification alert

New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist

FM Forums | Leica & Alternative Gear | Join Upload & Sell

Archive 2006 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

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.
http://www.fototime.com/C3C0C6105A36973/standard.jpg
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.
http://www.fototime.com/EDCE247FF9E3228/standard.jpg
http://www.fototime.com/D11CC4DF3522F5B/standard.jpg
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.
http://www.fototime.com/603E5D731BFD575/standard.jpg
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

Mar 13, 2006 at 11:48 PM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Shift Performance, 3 shot stitch
One of the big advantages of a shift lens is that it is possible to take 3 shot panos without parallax error and without pano stitching software. Using rotation about a nodal point (or more correctly exit pupil) allows stitching software to construct very large panoramas. Usually some amount of debarreling, small rotations, and alignments are used by the pano software to correct for perspective distortion and nodal alignment. However using the technique of moving the camera in the equal and opposite direction of the lens shift, has the effect of keeping the lens in the same exact place and shifting the sensor around to capture the larger image circle projected by the shift lens. One simply aligns the images without any corrections (flat stitching). Look at the last image in this tutorial, this camera L bracket movement is what was done in this test:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_58/essay.html
Here is a shot off of my deck with variable cloud cover. I focused on the bare tree in the center using the Angle finder C with split prism focusing screen. The 1DmkII was on ISO 200 at 1/250 sec in manual mode with the Hartblei at f/11. This image was captured in RAW, but the others in this review were shot in JPEG Large. I took the first centered shot, shifted the lens 10mm to the left and moved the camera 10mm to the right. Took the second shot at the same camera settings, then shifted the lens 10mm to the right by rotating the shift ring180 degrees trying not to jiggle the camera or touch the focusing ring. To compensate, the camera was shifted 10 mm to the left of center and took the 3rd shot. For these camera movements I used a RRS L bracket where I made a centerline mark. I centered on the bubble spirit level of the RRS lever clamp and used that to measure the 10mm camera shifts. This RRS lever clamp is a big help because when half open, the camera plate can slide back and forth for this 10mm positional adjustment to either side. Here is the flat stitch; I was not at all picky about the overlap, so it’s not perfect and there was a bit of wind which may cause some additional blur in the seams.
http://www.fototime.com/6EB24B073B4F06F/standard.jpg
I used the outer portions of the left and right images along with most of the center image. This is because the left side (center) of the right shift image is very soft, and vice versa. (See below under vignetting behavior.) No parallax problems at all, and previous stitch examples posted with this lens/method have also shown this to be the case. This stitch image will give you and idea of the field of view on a 1.3X body. Obviously FF will be wider and 1.5-1.6X crop will be narrower. Here is a larger (not full size) version for pixel peepers.
(See album http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image # 7) Adjust image size as desired

Image Sharpness: Comparison to Other Lenses

My initial test was done at night, with soft incandescent lighting. The scene:
http://www.fototime.com/F7AD28FE94140F0/standard.jpg
The initial comparison of the Hartblei 35mm Super Rotator, Canon 24L TS-E, and Canon 24-70L f/2.8 @ 35mm. I did a series of shots with similar exposure from f/3.5 to f/16; I show the comparison at f/8 and f/11 because I felt it was most representative of how I would use this lens. I shot the 24L TS-E first then moved the tripod back for the Hartblei 35 and the Canon zoom at 35. I ended up a bit too close for the 35mm lenses and those images are a bit larger as a result. Both Tilt/Shift lenses were manually focused using angle finder C at 2.5x using a split image focusing screen. All the images were post processed very similarly with considerable lightening and some USM. Not great exposures, minimally edited, and I hope a fair, but not exacting comparison. Smaller versions:
http://www.fototime.com/9AB47E911248910/standard.jpg
http://www.fototime.com/2172A685217E160/standard.jpg
and 100% links of the same comparison:
(see album http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 images 9,10)
Well, so far the all three lens appear reasonably similar. The next test was the scene off my back deck, shown for the flat stitching example. Here I added a 17-40L f4 at 35mm to the test. Focus was on the bare tree in the center, all of the lenses at f/4 and the two T/S lenses are centered. The 24L TS-E of course has a wider FOV and the trees are smaller. A 100% crop of the center of each of these images:
http://www.fototime.com/2EA595137C3A9DF/orig.jpg;
There are some differences in exposure, contrast and cropping, but I tried to keep the processing consistent so the exposures were not exactly comparable. At f/4 the Hartblei is a bit softer than the other 3 Canons, which look more similar to each other. Here is the same scene with the Hartblei when changing the f stop from 4 to 11, again at 100% crops:
http://www.fototime.com/86AE59412C3415A/orig.jpg;
The Hartblei sharpens up a bit from f/4 to f/8 and is constant after that. Overall it seems to be close to the Canon lenses at f/8 and above in the center of the image.
See part 3

Mar 13, 2006 at 11:48 PM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Vignetting and Image Circle Considerations

The same scene was used to evaluate vignetting at f4 where some would be expected. The frame was centered and focused, a shot taken, shifted right 5mm another shot taken, then shifted right to 10mm, each time rotating the ballhead to refocus on the bare tree to the center. The entire right half of each image is shown and the image size reduced to get three of them in a row. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t cooperating and there were some exposure changes due to the moving cloud cover.
(see album http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image # 13, and adjust image size)
The vignetting was noticeable at f4 and about the same in the 5cm and 10cm right shift images. The vignetting was entirely gone at f/8 (not shown, take my word for it because it’s a boring result). One interesting observation in the f/4 composite above, is that for the 10cm right shifted image, the center tree is much less sharp, while the pine tree at the far right is quite a bit sharper! The 10mm right shifted image has the lens center shifted to the far right, while the image center is now using what used to be the edge of the lens when it was centered. Not shown, is that the far left side of the right shifted image is even less sharp than the center tree. All of this is consistent with the proposal that the center of the lens is working much more effectively than the edges of the lens. Here is the bad news, the center of the image at f/8 after shifting 0, 5 and 10mm to the right. Each shot was focused on the bare tree in these 100% crops.
(see album http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image #14)
While the 5mm shift shot shows a mild decrease in definition the 10mm shift shot goes to mush. But before getting too excited lets try a smaller aperture, which will increase the effective image circle. On the 1DmkII I have empirically found that the maximum aperture value was f/14-16 without seeing any diffraction effects. So in between the constant rain I got 3 shots at f/16. Processing was a bit different here since these shots were in RAW.
(See album http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image # 15)
Redemption for the Hartblei 35! The center of the 5 and 10mm shifted images look close to that of the unshifted image; some loss of contrast, but not much loss of detail. Also when inspecting the 10mm right shifted image, (not shown) the sharpness was very similar on the extreme left, center and right edges. Here is a 100% crop of the center of the f/16 images shifted 10mm to the right, with some small amount of local contrast added (USM at 15, 20, 0) compared to the unshifted, centered image.
(See album http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image # 16)
In the shifted image, we can see some change in colors from the local contrast enhancement, and the very slightest amount of chromatic aberration (when blown up to 300%). But in general, the detail is very close. From the comparisons at f/16 I would presume that the edge softness seen in the 10mm shift images at f8 is the result hitting the edge of the image circle, where image quality dramatically degrades. F/16 simply increases the diameter of the image circle, maintaining the good image quality seen at the center. The ability to utilize the extremes of movement on this lens is going to be in part, dependent upon how far you can stop down without being diffraction limited. The smaller the pixels, the effects of diffraction onset will be a stop or two sooner that those of us with larger pixels. For example the smaller pixels of a Nikon D2X will be diffraction limited at f/11 to the same degree as my 1DmkII at f/16. Check out this reference for an explanation:
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-photography.htm#

The Canon 24L TS-E was tested with the same vignetting test at f/4 and f/8. Not shown, but the vignetting seen as darkening of the sky at f/4 was actually stronger than with the Hartblei. However, the FOV is significantly wider for the 24mm focal length too, so this is not unexpected. This is also observed as a decrease in exposure as there is less light coming in when shifted. Similar to the Hartblei, the vignetting completely disappears by f/8 and is a non-issue for practical f stops. However, the sharpness at f/8 when shifted was dramatically better than the Hartblei at the same aperture:
(See album http://www.fototime.com/inv/D5D0CC4D6CD5592 image #17)
The sharpness is almost as good at 10mm left shift as it is centered at f/8.

I did not come up with any clean experiments on testing lens tilt performance, but presume that the image sharpness upon extreme shift may be diagnostic of the image quality when the edge of the image circle is used in extreme tilt as well. I would assume that since the movements of tilt and shift are independent that the amount of potential vignetting will also be additive. Extreme amounts of both tilt and shift will likely challenge the image quality of the Hartblei sooner than that of the Canon T/S, even at the smallest apertures.

In summary, when stopped down to f/8 the Hartblei 35 Super Rotator is comparable to Canon lenses in the center, but when the edge of the image circle is used the sharpness drops dramatically. When the Hartblei is stopped down to f/16 the image quality is close to that of the Canon lenses, even with more extreme shift movements. The Hartblei still has the edge on flexibility as the decoupling of shift and tilt axes is a nice design feature. Mechanically the Hartblei is sound, particularly given the much lower (< 1/2) price, but comes with some optical compromises. Stopping way down to the limits of diffraction may be needed to fully utilize the tilt and shift capabilities of this interesting lens.

Mar 13, 2006 at 11:50 PM

Graham Mitchell
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Wow, quite a write-up. Thanks!

Mar 14, 2006 at 09:33 AM

Bob Bell
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Very nice Mike, After seeing the review on the Hartblei 85 I was looking for a 35mm solution and only found the ARAX one which doesnt seem as nice as the Hartblei.

Do you think there would be problems using it on a 20D with the sensor narrower than your 1DmkII?

Again very nice and very timely for what I have been looking for.

Mar 14, 2006 at 09:40 AM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Bob Bell wrote:
Very nice Mike, After seeing the review on the Hartblei 85 I was looking for a 35mm solution and only found the ARAX one which doesnt seem as nice as the Hartblei.

Do you think there would be problems using it on a 20D with the sensor narrower than your 1DmkII?

I don't know if the Arax uses the same optical elements as the Hartblei, I will ask the importer.
The Arax doesn't allow changing the tilt and shift axes relative to one another. In that regard it is like the Canon without the ability to move the 4 screws to half rotate the tilt relative to the shift. I kind of doubt if the optical quality would be any better, I rather doubt it since the Hartblei seems to me made for more of an up scale market than the economy Arax, but I haven't tried it.

As for the smaller pixel pitch of the 20D and diffraction at f/16, I would look at the reference I gave for diffraction, and go to the section entitled "Visual Example: Aperture Vs Pixels Size" place your cursor on the 20D and without clicking move over to the column with the various f stops and look at the results on the grid. Emperically, take a series of shots of a well lit distant scene at 1/2 or 1/3 f stop increments, sharpend them all the same and compare what you are giving up at f16 vs f11.
Mike K

Edited by Mike K on Mar 15, 2006 at 04:26 AM GMT

Mar 14, 2006 at 11:43 AM

Rainer
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Thanks, Mike! This is a very nice review. It would have been interesting to see how well the TS-E 24mm did with the 1.4x extender, providing a focal length very comparable to the Hartblei. I've taken a few shots with that combination on the weekend (I have a rental TS-E 24mm right now) but we'll have to wait for the results until I get the film developed (yep, I'm not digital yet).

Mar 14, 2006 at 02:28 PM

rico
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Mike, thanks for a super write-up. Other than the bulk, this Hartblei looks like a nice general-purpose lens! My tilt/shift rig is limited to 100mm, near-macro range, and the use of a bellows unit. Would love access to a combo of infinity focus, portrait orientation, front fall, and front tilt.

Mar 14, 2006 at 03:44 PM

john_edwards
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Very nice review, thanks for sharing. One thing I noticed on your test and comparing my 24-70 2.8L @ 24mm and my 24TS-E was that the 24-70 is sharper, especially close in. It seemed to me that the 24 TS has more depth of field when at a 2 degree tilt with both lenses focused 50" from sensor plane. Haven't tried using the 24 TS with a 1.4 but thats interesting. John

Mar 14, 2006 at 04:00 PM

tennclay
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

It would be interesting to see a comparison of the 2 T/Ss with distant scenery - kinda like your stitched shot.

I found that my old Hartblei 65mm did not seem to have adequate resolving power for landscapes when compared to good Canon lenses, though it was plenty sharp up close. Judging from the pano, it appears that may be the case with your 35mm also.

Good review, btw...

Mar 14, 2006 at 05:42 PM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

john_edwards wrote:
One thing I noticed on your test and comparing my 24-70 2.8L @ 24mm and my 24TS-E was that the 24-70 is sharper, especially close in. It seemed to me that the 24 TS has more depth of field when at a 2 degree tilt with both lenses focused 50" from sensor plane. Haven't tried using the 24 TS with a 1.4 but thats interesting. John

I find my 24-70 to be quite sharp, certainly better than the 17-40 in the overlap region.
One of the limitations of sharpness for the 24 TSE is that manual focus may be more variable than the AF used for the zooms. For tilt angle I use a table calculated by the method of Scheimpflug. The table is in this thread
https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic2/330560/2

"It would be interesting to see a comparison of the 2 T/Ss with distant scenery - kinda like your stitched shot."
How distant? the tree I am focusing on is about 100 ft away. This tower on the hills in the background are perhaps 4-5 miles away, but I did not focus on them. Here is a very distant pano of my friends who owns this 24 TSE
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1029&message=17267704
Its pretty wide and focus is not an issue, just set on infinity.
Mike K

Mar 14, 2006 at 06:11 PM

tennclay
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Thanks - I guess 4-5 miles is little far !

I was thinking of comparisons from 100-200 yards maybe. At those distances I found the hartblei to be very soft compared to a 17-40 or 85 1.8 - even stopped down. It seemed like it just didn't have the resolving power of the canon lenses. I am trying to find some comparison shots I took, but can't locate them now. Maybe the 35 is better though...

Mar 14, 2006 at 06:53 PM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Mike K wrote:
I don't know if the Arax uses the same optical elements as the Hartblei, I will ask the importer.

I found out from another poster that the Arax lenses are from the same factory as the Hartblei, but the Hartblei are multicoated, and obviously in a different lens body.

"The optical elements are selected from those made for the Mir-20 35mm/2.8 Arsat lens, made by Zavod Arsenal in the Ukraine. Arax uses the same optical elements. Arsat markets a shift-only lens with the same glass. You wondered on the FM forum if they were the same and I'm answering here since I'm not an FM registrant. Hartblei usually recoats the glass with fancier coatings, and they claim to match the optical elements."
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?p=1291754#poststop
Mike K

Mar 15, 2006 at 01:24 PM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Canon TSE with 1.4x TC
Based upon a couple of requests and my own interest I did one last test:
Canon 24L TS-E with 1.4X Canon TC (34mm total) Vs Hartblei 35 SR. The rain stopped this morning and this afternoon it started to clear up. Set up on the deck again, same scene focusing on the bare tree.
The Canon went first, f8 became f11 with the TC 1/640 sec ISO 200. I kind of randomly picked the 5mm right shifted shots to compare. The Hartblei was at f16 based upon my previous testing, 1/320 ISO 200 and also the 5mm right shifted image. 100% crops from the center of the image after shifting.
http://www.fototime.com/24345FD5A1BB390/orig.jpg
the sharpness is very close, sometime I prefer the Canon/Canon, while sometimes the Hartblei seems to hold a slight edge. Whoa, but look at the color! The Hartblei is very red, the sky looks like sunset while the Canon is an icy blue. I think reality isa bit closer to the Canon, but not that blue. I just checked the Thumbs (these were shot in RAW and boosted during conversion) and they still have the reb/blue trend, but not anywhere near as strong. Thus much of the color difference is the 2/3 EV difference in exposure upon conversion. The Hartblei got a lot redder while the Canon got slightly bluer. However if you go back over all of the comparative shots the red/Hartblei tendency is always there. umm, interesting. Its supposed to rain some more tonight, now I know how Seattle folks feel.
Mike K

Mar 15, 2006 at 11:24 PM

madguy
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Mike, this is a great way of making a highres image. Thank you for the report. I'm wondering, would it be possible use both shift and tilt and combine all 9 images (3x3) for final image. My quick guess is one can use one of those tripod that have the center column raised with a crank or maybe shims/washers to vertically move the camera body.

Also can you guesstimate the horizontal field of view of combining those 3 shifted images? For 35mm and 24mm lenses.

Mar 16, 2006 at 12:59 AM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

madguy wrote:
Mike, this is a great way of making a highres image. Thank you for the report. I'm wondering, would it be possible use both shift and tilt and combine all 9 images (3x3) for final image. My quick guess is one can use one of those tripod that have the center column raised with a crank or maybe shims/washers to vertically move the camera body.

Also can you guesstimate the horizontal field of view of combining those 3 shifted images? For 35mm and 24mm lenses.

Yes of course you can combine two rows of the flat 3 shot stitch by panning the camera up or down. But those 2 rows wont be flat stitched together like the 3 shots I've shown from the shift action of the lens only. Just like horizontal panos you will have to rotate about the nodal point to minimize parallax. Since you have to use pano software anyway for this stitch, why not do it in both directions more flexibly? I have the pano setup from RRS which seems to do a great job with the nodal point issue. They combine 2 pano clamps and rails to do both vertical and horizontal pano rows.
http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/pano/index.html
click on "Ultimate Pro" Omni-Pivot Package
However, with your shift-pano strategy you only need one pano clamp and 2 rails.

Now my friend who is loaning me the Canon 24 TS-E recently purchased an older Olympus Zukio shift lens that shifts both vertically and horizontally (but does't tilt). If you dig around this forum I bet you can find them, I don't recall the model #. Here the amount of shift and vignetting will depend upon your camera sensor size, etc. This type of shift will do what you want, but I am not sure how you would counter move the vertical movement, perhaps with a geared center column? Remember the idea is to keep the lens motionless and move the sensor.
I was going to mention the Zork adapter, which holds the lens in place and shifts the body. but that seems to move in only one dimension. Perhaps somebody has more information here.

FOV for 3 stitch pano- for the Hartblei 35 on my 1DmkII it is very roughly 90 degrees. This will vary with your camera crop, or lack of it. You can do better with a extremely wide angle lens, but this approach gives more pixels and very little distortion. A 24mm gives a much wider FOV but still way less than 180. Here is a very wide pano made with the 24 TS-E I am borrowing, Thanks Andy!
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1029&message=17267704
Mike K

Mar 16, 2006 at 09:28 AM

AJSJones
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Mike
It's the Olympus Zuiko 35PC that has L & R shift (±10mm), as well as rise and fall (±12-13 mm) . For "flat" stitching, if you use max shift, you can't use any rise or fall (and vice versa), but with moderate shift you can do simultaneous moderate rise/fall (and vice versa). For using the shift/rise/fall movements to sample the (larger) image circle I estimated it would ~double the # of pixels captured by a 1.6 camera (for 1.3 and FF the increase was less). For critical parallax issues you would indeed need a rig to compensate for the up/down and L/R movements. I did notice the mirror box on my 20D got in the way at one of the maximum positions...

Mar 16, 2006 at 02:58 PM

Rainer
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Mike, thanks for testing the 24 TSE with the 1.4x TC. It looks like it did reasonably well!

Rainer

Mar 16, 2006 at 10:18 PM

Mike K
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Review of Hartblei 35 SR for Canon & Nikon

Thanks Andy for the loan of the Canon 24L TS-E. It was really helpful in putting some perspective on this slippery business of testing the movements in Tilt/Shift lenses.

In addition, I am grateful for your suggestions and discussions on testing strategy. A round of appreciation!
Mike K

Mar 16, 2006 at 11:43 PM


FM Forums \| Leica & Alternative Gear \| Join Upload & Sell

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.