Two weekends ago, Mike rented a pair of Nikkor PC-E lenses – affectionately known by the photographic public as Tilt-Shift lenses. These lenses are each over $2000 new and are instantly addictive. Although the weather wouldn’t cooperate – we went out and got our money’s worth … tilting and shifting like we stole them. The ultimate photographic instrument is not some extremely expensive medium format digital camera that costs $50,000+ – it is, in fact, a view camera (those huge bellows with a lens sticking out of the front and a photographers legs sticking out of a hood in the back). View cameras allow you to move the lens from side to side and up and down without moving the film plane. Why does this matter? Because it means you can make images like the ones below:
Photo by Mike Boehmer – Feel free to use images with links and credit – no commercial use without permission.
Photo by Mike Boehmer – Feel free to use images with links and credit – no commercial use without permission.
Photo by Justin Kern – Feel free to use images with links and credit – no commercial use without permission.
Many people love (ourselves included) love the way the images trick your eye into thinking you are looking at a photograph of a miniature model:
Photo by Justin Kern – Feel free to use images with links and credit – no commercial use without permission.
These lenses are *HUGE* because they cast an image circle much larger than a standard 35 mm frame – this is essentially why you can tilt them off axis and shift them from side to side and still capture an image.
We did the touristy thing and climbed up on the LaSalle Street pedestrian bridge to fire off a few frames. In the process, we met some nice folks doing the same thing who we gave a Windy Pixel MOO card. Hope you guys had a good time and visited the site!
Another cool feature of these lenses is that they can be used to obtain steep perspectives not possible with lenses mounted parallel to the image plane, then you can stop down to f/32 and get EVERYTHING in focus:
I will one day own one of these bad boys. They are extremely expensive, but if you told me I could only have one lens in my bag ever – I’d tell you to give me the Nikkor 45mm f/2.8 PC-E and to weld that sonovabitch to my camera! (All the images I posted above are made with that lens)
Per Brennan’s request – a tWp wallpaper – this one is 1024 x 768:
by Justin
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