articles/Digital/timeschange-page3

The Times They are a changin' - part 3 of 1 2 3

by Mike McNamee Published 01/04/2008

Tilting on the other hand, changes where the depth of field lies in accordance with the Scheimflug Principle. We will spare you the physics - suffice to say that if you are photographing a landscape and need more near depth of field to cover the rocks at your feet, you tilt the lens down and the job is done! The same principle applies if you have a product at an oblique angle to the camera and wish to get both the front and the back into focus - except that here you tilt in the horizontal plane; again it is easier to look at the pictures than try to understand the words!

To test the lens we used the PC24mm with and without shift to demonstrate the effect. We also tested it against an older 24mm f2 Nikkor and finally we corrected the perspective in Photoshop and compared the result. We then shot using tilt in both the vertically downwards position and sideways against a wall. The PC lens just won in all aspects in terms of sharpness and colour fringing. The striking thing when using the lens for the first time is just how little shift and tilt are needed to perfect images, the values in the specification seem, at a casual glance, to be quite small, but they do exert a large influence on the picture geometry!

Overall then this lens is a little beauty which is going to make huge inroads into the architectural photographer's armoury. Paul is already imagining that this lens is going to stay on his D3 for most of its working life!

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1st Published 01/04/2008
last update 09/12/2022 14:59:54

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