Thursday, June 18, 2009

Not Enough Shift/Rise?

What do you do when the shift capabilities of your DSLR T/S lens is not enough to include the top of a building or cliff like Half Dome from a strategic point of view?

You might combine full shift on a lens like the Canon 45T/S AND tilting it up some too. Then you correct the slight tilt in PS. By my tests that is a better technique than using a regular lens and doing all the perspective correction in PS with all the cropping and interpolation that involves. I use this compromise technique all the time as DSLR T/S lenses have limited rise compared to view camera lenses which I used exclusively for 28 years.

Or you may consider using a slightly wider lens and cropping the bottom some, like a 35 perspective correction lens. Even though the shift may not be greater (10.4mm to each side, 12mm up and 13mm down according to one source on the web for an Olympus), the greater field of view at full shift may give you the rise you need. For example I use a vintage Olympus 35PC with an EOS adapter to fill the gap between the Canon 24 and 45 T/Ss. Most examples of that lens are very good and some are superb. Composition when tilting for perspective correction in PS requires some forethought as you end up effectively cropping a thin triangle from each upper corner of the image. These cropped areas must be pre-visualised when composing in the field as, in my early days with DSLRs, I ran into trouble by not including enough room on the sides to accommodate the PC cropping.

No comments:

Post a Comment

 
Add to Technorati Favorites