Few lenses are more versatile and useful than a tilt-shift lens, offering high levels of sharpness, the ability to control depth of field independently of aperture, correction of verticals, and more. For Nikon shooters, there is the PC NIKKOR 19mm f/4E ED tilt-shift lens, and this excellent video review takes a look at the sort of image quality and performance you can expect from it in practice.
Coming to you from Christopher Frost, this great video review takes a look at the Nikon PC NIKKOR 19mm f/4E ED Tilt-Shift lens. The 19mm f/4E tilt-shift offers a range of impressive features sure to make it useful for anything from architectural to landscape work, including:
- +/- 7.5° of tilt
- +/- 12mm of shift
- Up to 90° of rotation both left and right, with 30° stops
- Tilting mechanism can rotate 90° left a stop at 45° for vertical shooting
- Three extra-low dispersion elements for reduced color fringing and chromatic aberrations and increased clarity
- Two aspherical elements for reduced spherical aberrations for reduced distortion and increased sharpness
- Nano Crystal and Super Integrated Coatings for reduced surface and internal reflections for reduced flares and ghosting and increased contrast
- Fluorine coating and front and rear elements for protection
- Specialized electromagnetic aperture mechanism for increased exposure stability and accuracy
Check out the video above for the full rundown from Frost.
Why aren't many reviews like this? It's well done and we don't see anyone waving their hands around and showing off. This video focuses on the subject. Bravo!
Thanks, Chris, for the level-headed review, as usual from you. I have been sorely tempted by this pricey item. I do have one query, though:
If you shift the lens sideways to get a panorama as you suggest, won't the effect be minimal, unless you're doing a close-up, like with the watch in this video? Standing with my 20mm lens and moving a few centimetres left or right makes a negligible difference to the image in the frame, and what you're suggesting is equivalent to this. Or am I missing something here?
With this technique the lens and the sensor aren't moving together as they would in your example. TS lenses have much larger image circles than standard full frame lenses. Ideally, you could fix the lens in place and shift the camera around so that the giant image circle was stationary and the sensor just moves around inside it. But, as you observed the change in the image is negligible when moving the lens/sensor pair a few millimeters in either direction. I know that I have seen a diagram that demonstrates how it works, but I can't put my hands on it at the moment. A google image search for tilt shift panorama "image circle" will return some relevant diagrams.
You're right, of course, Daniel. The image circle effectively makes this a lens with a wider field of view, so you can end up taking a 24mm X 60 mm (36 + 12 + 12) image (in sensor area or film-equivalent terms) at a 19mm focal length, giving a an angle of view of 120 degrees, similar to a 10mm lens by my calculation. Thanks for replying. Makes the lens more tempting!