Greetings! I'm in touch with you, Timur Mustaev. Most likely, you, the readers, have heard about a camera screen that is very convenient in a functional sense, which is able to extend and unfold. What about a moving lens? Interested? Well, get ready to find out what a tilt-shift lens is.

Key points

Let's first understand the general aspects, namely: what is hidden behind the term tilt-shift and how optics with this name differ from others.

Tilt-shift means turn and shift. Therefore, a lens with such characteristics can move, tilt its front. Due to the fact that the angle between the photo plane and the camera sensor plane changes, we have great opportunities to work with, as well as different sharpness of the objects in the picture.

It is possible to distinguish optics for photographic equipment according to different criteria. Here, the manufacturer, and the focal length, and aperture, etc., but tilt-shift lenses are considered a completely special category.

They are not often seen in the work of an ordinary photographer, and beginners may not even know about the existence of such a thing. But their functions are amazing and can come in handy in many situations, namely:

When shooting architecture

Usually, when photographing buildings (and in general any objects with straight lines), the unpleasant effect of their distortion is obtained. The houses appear to be falling as their vertical walls begin to arch. This is a common occurrence, especially when using a wide angle lens.

If you have a tilt-shift lens in your hands, then you don’t have to worry about such defects: all architectural structures will be straight. Not during post-processing, but at the shooting stage, you can adjust the tilt of the lens so that the perspective is correctly displayed.

For landscape

In addition to the fact that here also the transfer of a sense of depth (perspective) depends only on you, you can also control the clarity zone of objects that fall into the frame.

For a normal lens, getting all parts of a photo sharp is tricky. Even if we significantly increase the value of , the problem will not be completely solved - some objects will still appear blurry when viewed closely. In addition, a large f will create new problems.

Useful information

You don't have to worry about how to work with this type of lens. It is attached to the device in the same way as the rest. It is quite easy to adjust: all control is right on it and comes down to its physical tilt, turn, rotation.

Where can we find such optics? If you consider yourself a Nikonian or a Kenonian, there will be no difficulties in buying.

Canon, for example, has four TS-E lens options that range from 17mm to 90mm. Nikon has three PC-E lenses with focal lengths of 24-85mm, as well as a PC lens with a focal length of 19mm.

Unfortunately, the optics, referred to as tilt-shift, is only on manual control, including focus settings. Therefore, autofocus cannot be relied upon. Careful installation on site and a keen eye will help you.

Craftsmen even offer amateur photographers to make their own shift lens. For example, it is proposed to take an old helios for manufacturing, or rather its part with lenses, a rubber mount for the steering rack and a bayonet cap in which a hole is made. And all this is fastened with strong threads and electrical tape. Of course, you can try if you don’t feel sorry for the existing lens and the time spent on the experiment.

You can already judge the result when you try to photograph something. In my opinion, the design will not inspire confidence, and if you take photography seriously and use various kinds of lenses, then all equipment should be of high quality and reliable.

The price of such "toys" for photographers will be significant. And if the funds do not yet allow you to buy a tilt-shift lens, you can to a certain extent replace it with an adapter with the appropriate properties. You just need to be careful - the shift adapter is not suitable for all cameras, but only for those that have a wide image field, that is, for.

For a more detailed study of the camera, the technical and functional part, an excellent video course will help you. It contains only the necessary and important video tutorials that will help you in your development as a photographer.

Digital SLR for beginners 2.0 who has a NIKON camera.

My first MIRROR- who has a CANON camera.

Bye everyone! Visit my blog, subscribe. Let's expand our knowledge of photography together!

All the best to you, Timur Mustaev.

Tilt/Shift lenses are fairly specialized optics that are not often used by photography enthusiasts. However, such lenses expand creative possibilities and allow you to solve a variety of specific tasks. Tilt-shift lenses are interesting because they can be used to overcome various limitations in depth of field and perspective, achieving original, unusual effects when shooting.

Features of tilt-shift lenses

The main distinguishing feature of the Tilt/Shift lens is the ability to tilt/rotate and shift the optical design relative to the photosensitive sensor. This is achieved due to the fact that the front group of lenses remains movable. It is she who is able to tilt at a certain angle relative to the plane of the matrix.

What does this give the photographer? Shift and rotation allow you to change the depth of field in the desired plane, control the perspective and correct geometric distortions. With a Tilt/Shift lens, you can, for example, get a very small depth of field in one part of the photographed scene, and close to infinity in another. The ability to shift provides two options for using optics at once - changing the perspective and expanding the viewing angle.

Correcting perspective distortions and achieving some of the unusual effects that are obtained using the Tilt / Shift lens today, in principle, is possible with software tools. But you must admit, it is much better and easier to immediately remove everything “correctly”, so as not to waste a lot of time on subsequent processing. Despite the advantages of Tilt / Shift optics, primarily associated with the ability to control depth of field, it also has a drawback - a rather high price, despite the fact that you are unlikely to use such a lens in everyday shooting.

Application of tilt-shift lenses

To understand all the advantages and features of Tilt / Shift lenses, it is better to analyze the use of such optics with specific examples. Let us dwell in more detail on those situations when the use of such optics will be relevant:

– Shooting architecture

First of all, such a lens should be used in architectural photography. The fact is that when photographing any tall structure with a conventional lens, you have three options. The first is to simply point the optics up and then, unfortunately, distortions associated with increased perspective will be noticeable. In the upper part of the frame, the vertical lines will simply begin to “fall over”. Moreover, such distortions will manifest themselves the stronger, the higher the structure and the closer you are to it. The second option is to try to photograph the building from above, tilting the optics down. But the results are also far from the most pleasant. In the picture, the building will expand towards the top, the vertical lines will converge at the bottom.

Finally, the last option is shooting when the optical axis of the lens is perpendicular to the building. In this case, the convergence of vertical lines will no longer be noticeable, however, capturing the entire building in the frame will be problematic. Of course, you can take a picture of the building by pointing the camera lens up, and then correct the distortions that have appeared in a graphics editor. But you need to understand that software removes distortion by stretching the frame, which, of course, reduces image quality and, in addition, the building in the picture turns out to be slightly elongated or flattened.

This is where the tilt-shift lens comes to the aid of the photographer. Shift controls perspective to straighten converging vertical lines. This allows you to keep the high walls of buildings strictly vertical in photographs and, thus, get rid of distortions and “collapses”. The use of a tilt-shift lens is especially important in situations where you cannot move away from the building at a convenient distance for shooting.

— Landscapes

A tilt-shift lens is also useful in landscape photography, when you want both distant and nearby objects to be in focus. With this optic, you can control the depth of field by capturing both the foreground and the background at the same time in depth of field.

— Panoramas

Tilt / Shift lenses are in demand when shooting panoramas. To do this, the camera is mounted on a tripod and, using the shift of the optical scheme, several frames are taken, from which you can then glue the panorama. The advantage of this method is that you don't have to resort to using the pan head to eliminate parallax errors in the foreground. The gluing process itself is also simplified, since there is no need to correct the perspective.

- Object shooting

The ability to control the depth of field can be used in the implementation of subject shooting. Indeed, when shooting small objects, such as jewelry, the photographer often encounters a situation where the object (or part of it) simply does not turn out sharp. Even closing the aperture to the limit values ​​​​does not help. Tilt / Shift lens also allows you to control the depth of field by tilting relative to the plane of the photographed object. To obtain sharp photographic images of an object, it is enough just to tilt the optics at the right angle to obtain the optimal zone of sharpness.

- The effect of "toy"

Tilt/Shift lenses are used to create unusual, fun effects. In particular, for turning large objects into miniature figures. Many of us have seen on the Internet stunning images of architectural objects and buildings, as if taken from a bird's eye view, and therefore looking like small houses in the photographs. In this way, the illusion of a toy world is achieved. This effect of "miniature" or "toy-like" can be obtained due to the short and selective depth of field, using the same tilt-shift lens.

Of course, a Tilt/Shift lens is not an optic that you will use all the time. But if you are thinking about creating interesting, unusual creative effects or are faced with a specific task that is difficult to solve with standard optics, then having a tilt-shift lens in your arsenal will be very useful.

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Principle of operation

The optical scheme of Tilt/Shift lenses is such that the field of a high-quality image is much larger than the area of ​​the frame, due to which the photographer can shift the frame within the boundaries of this field by moving or tilting the lens relative to the sensor plane. As a result, the correspondence between the perspective centers of the lens and the image is lost. The result is an effect that corresponds to the framing shift from the center of the image to the edge in lenses with a wide angle of view.

Shift has two main uses: changing perspective or widening the angle of view (using multiple shots). In this case, the sensor does not capture the entire circular image as a whole, but part of it - the central rectangular crop. Multiple shots are used to expand the angle of view.

To say that Tilt / Shift lenses fix something in the frame is not entirely true. Rather, they allow us to restructure the plot according to our usual perception. As you know, our visual perception does not accurately reflect the geometric construction of the world, as a mirror does, but produces a psychological processing of the seen picture in the brain.

The other side of the coin is that lenses with a shift function are larger and heavier than conventional lenses (at the same focus values ​​and largest aperture). In addition, with a significant shift, those parts of the circular image that have already degraded quality will fall into the field of view. But here it must be said that on a conventional lens, a constantly available image is often not of the best quality. Tilt/shift lens with focal length 24 mm corresponds in its optical data to a conventional lens with focal length 16 mm due to the same size of the circular image. And from this it follows that the tilt / shift lens with a focus of 24 mm is inferior in the quality of the resulting optical image to a conventional lens with a focus of 24 mm. This is understandable - the larger the angle of view, the lower the quality.

In the marking of lenses that allow only a shift of the optical axis in the transverse direction, there are letters PC, which means perspective control (eng. Perspective Control, Perspective Correction). With the additional ability to tilt the optical axis, the lens is most often marked with the abbreviation TS, which means shift and tilt.

Usage example

For example, you need to shoot both the flowers in the foreground and the castle in the background.

The red line marks the area of ​​best focus. As you can see, only at F16 do we manage to capture both in depth of field. But at the same time, both objects are on the borders of the depth of field and will not be perfectly sharp. Not to mention the fact that F16 is a lens aperture value that exceeds the diffraction limit for most modern cameras and therefore also contributes to reducing the sharpness of the photo.

Canon TS-E 90/2.8

Lens Canon TS-E 90/2.8- another representative of tilt / shift lenses, which we started talking about in a previous article

Tilt/Shift lenses allow

— lens inclination relative to the image plane;

- move it to the side, relative to the image plane;

Why is all this necessary?

If you are photographing a tall building with a normal lens, then you have three options.
First way is to point the lens up.

But at the same time, a strong distortion of the image occurs, the perspective is enhanced, and the vertical lines begin to “fall over” strongly in the upper part of the frame.

Second way- shoot from above, tilting the lens down. Then the building expands upward and the verticals converge at the bottom. An even less pleasant sight.

third way- shoot by directing the optical axis of the lens perpendicular to the building. Then the verticals will remain vertical, but it is unlikely that you will be able to capture the entire building in the frame at a reasonable shooting distance from the building.

How to fix converging verticals?

You can try to fix it on your computer.
AT Adobe Camera Raw there is a tab Lens Corrections, in which many perspective distortions can be manually corrected.

The problem with this method is that distortions are eliminated by stretching the image and, accordingly, reducing its quality by up to 50%.

Depending on which side of your image was initially distorted (the verticals converged at the top or bottom), the building will turn out to be flattened or elongated. Accordingly, when correcting (aligning the verticals) on the computer, the edges will be cut off, but the building will be of the wrong proportions. Further correction of the height of the building will further degrade the quality of the photo due to the interpolation of missing pixels.

shift effect

A photographer who shoots architecture comes to the rescue with the Shift-effect, which consists in shifting the lens relative to the image plane.

In fact, this effect opens up a lot more possibilities for us.

We get a tool for making panoramas. You won't be bothered by the detail in your shots as you enlarge your sensor (virtually) according to how much the optical axis of the lens is shifted.
You can move the lens left, right, up, down and take pictures. Subsequently stitch the resulting images into Adobe Photoshop(Auto-Align->Reposition function) and enjoy a multi-megapixel panorama ( ~60% frame increase for a full frame camera. 21 Mpx->33.6 Mpx).

tilt effect

When shooting landscapes, we often find it difficult to capture both the foreground and the background at the same time.
For example, flowers in the foreground and a castle in the background.

The red line marks the area of ​​best focus. As you can see, only at F16 do we manage to capture both in depth of field. But at the same time, both objects are on the borders of the depth of field and will not be perfectly sharp. Not to mention the fact that F16 is a lens aperture value that exceeds the diffraction limit for most modern cameras and therefore also contributes to reducing the sharpness of the photo.

And here we are saved by the Tilt-effect, which allows you to position the depth of field not perpendicular to the image plane, but in accordance with the principles of Scheimpflug (see illustration).

Review and impressions of using the Canon TS-E 90 / 2.8 lens

The lens has a metal body, unlike many plastic autofocus lenses. Canon. But it also costs a lot. Handheld focusing is difficult, it is better to use a tripod.
The optical quality is excellent, but at extreme tilt angles there is some drop in sharpness at the edges.

Particularly interesting for photographers involved in subject photography. On the one hand, it does not give such a strong effect as the wider-angle TS-E lenses, and on the other hand, it gives a larger scale. Those. if it is better to take for shooting architecture, Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L or Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8, then for the subject - unambiguously Canon TS-E 90/2.8.

It also has some minor downsides. For all its high quality, it is not a macro lens and does not allow you to shoot with a large scale, unlike Canon 100/2.8L Macro and Canon 180/3.5L Macro.

This problem can be solved in two ways:

Extension rings
- macro nozzle

For the rest, IPIG of this tilt/shift The lens changes like this: the depth of field wedge rises if you focus at a short distance, and lowers if you focus at a long distance.

How to find the plane of greatest sharpness

Find the highest points of objects in the foreground and background (X and Y in the picture). If you imagine a board, then it will lie on points X and Y. The Scheimpflug plane (the sharpest) will lie on the midpoints of the X and Y heights (passing through points A and B).

returning to the Canon TS-E 90 / 2.8 lens ...

The lens has small wheels - stoppers (marked with a blue circle) and large wheels for moving parts of the lens (marked with a red circle).

The stopper is loosened and the lens shifts left-right (shift) or tilts up/down (tilt).
Actually, I write the directions purely conditionally, since when you turn the lens, all directions change.
In the photo above, the lens is shifted to the right relative to the image plane (shift) and tilted down (tilt).

In the photo above, the lens is already without a shift, but tilted to the left (it is simply rotated).

In this photo, the red arrow shows the stopper, which fixes the lens in one position of rotation. The lens rotates 45 degrees.

Using a Canon TS-E 90/2.8 Lens

Now let's move on to the slides...

As you can see, the difference is significant. With tilt we have a much sharper image. It is the same in both pictures.

But tilt-shift lenses, although interesting, can be applied mainly to flat objects, such as coins, watches, rings, etc.
For example, if you are photographing a single pearl, then a tilt-shift lens will not help you in any way. This requires other means, which I talk about.

In order to finally please you, I am enclosing a large book with beautiful photos taken with tilt-shift lenses.

I hope this article will serve as an impetus for new creative achievements!

At the disposal of photographers, I must admit, there are quite a few useful tools that allow you to solve completely different photographic tasks. We need some pieces of glass and pieces of iron at every shooting, others are in demand much less frequently. There are also rarely used devices, but it is difficult to do without them.

A tilt-shift lens can also be called such an infrequently used photographic product. Tilt-shift (tilt-shift) optics (the word tilt is translated from English as "offset", and the word "shift" is written right on your keyboard) allows you to control the perspective, which is a real find, for example, when photographing architecture. This effect manifests itself due to the shift of the optical group of lenses relative to the plane of the matrix or film. Recall that in architectural photography it is extremely important to keep the plane of the photosensitive element strictly parallel to the facade of the building, which leads to two difficulties at once. Firstly, half of the frame becomes uninformative (except for the mother earth under the photographer's feet as a useful part of the photo); secondly, the building may simply not fit into the boundaries of the frame. If you photograph a tall object from ground level, simply by fitting it into the frame of the frame, then a characteristic blockage of the walls is inevitable. And if our eye (or rather, the brain) successfully “corrects” these distortions in real time, then an outside observer sees just untidy pictures on which the house “falls”, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa can envy the curvature of straight walls in reality.

Of course, a smart photographer can easily correct perspective distortions in a graphics editor, but it's much easier to shoot "correctly" right away, without wasting precious time on processing. Among the shortcomings of the "hardware" approach is the significant cost of tilt-shift optics. The popular Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II tilt-shift lens costs about 70,000 rubles, and the TS-E 45 f/2.8 from the same manufacturer costs about 50,000.

An important feature of tilt-shift lenses, which has no software analogues, should be called the ability to control the depth of field - the depth of the sharply depicted space. Some types of photography (for example, product photography) are extremely critical to this parameter. When shooting subject photography, for example, jewelry, the photographer is faced with the fact that the entire subject simply does not fit into the "sharp" area, no matter how hard the aperture is clamped. Sometimes such pictures acquire a certain artistic innuendo, but often the customer will boldly classify them as defective.

If you do not unnecessarily load readers with the theory of tilt-shift optics, formulas and other Scheimpflug rules, in reality everything turns out to be quite simple. We need to "put" the depth of field along the subject, thereby achieving an equally sharp image of the entire required area. With the development of digital technology, any photographer can easily see how the depth of field "lay down", and, if necessary, easily change the inclination of the optical axis. And you have to pay for convenience, right?

But more often than not, the photographer simply uses tilt-shift lenses to create fun effects. We will talk about these effects today.

Open the photo in Photoshop. The technique for simulating the tilt-shift effect is simple; who owns PS at a sufficient level is able to think of it himself, for especially lazy photographers on the site www.tiltshiftphotography.net all actions are described in detail and step by step. Let's try to repeat. Of course, any photo is fine, but it's better to choose a subject so that the tilt-shift effect works for the general idea, and not against it. The result will be clearly visible on photographs of large, large-scale objects - a railway station, a building, a street. Ideally, the photograph should be taken with some inclination to the ground, from a height. As an example, I chose a photograph of St. Isaac's Cathedral, which I took from a helicopter this spring:

Now press "Q" - exit the mask mode. The red zone disappeared, the dotted selection became noticeable in the photo:

As a result of simple manipulations, the picture becomes a toy! The tilt-shift effect of the lens creates the illusion that the photo is of a real city, and the layout:

The most corrosive, but not willing to spend their honestly earned money on tilt-shift optics, to heighten the effect, I can play with the level and saturation sliders, and also harmlessly increase the sharpness - the tilt-shift effect will become more noticeable. Done, enjoy!

Want to play with tilt-shift, but too lazy to deal with Photoshop? No problem. You can easily find online services that allow you to create a tilt-shift effect without mastering the numerous intricacies of processing - just upload photos to the site and get your own processed pictures as output; the viewer will have a quite convincing feeling that they were shot with a tilt-shift lens.

Funny effect this very tilt-shift? Undoubtedly. Should it be used frequently? Hardly. As in the case with any other photographic tool and technique, tilt-shift and all sorts of "skews" for it are far from always appropriate - it all depends on the artistic task facing the photographer. Thus, it is easy to add grotesqueness to familiar pictures, to achieve the illusion of a toy world. Whether your pictures need it at this particular moment is up to you.

Good luck and lots of great photos.