PC-E NIKKOR 24mm f/3.5D ED lens
So, I bought my birthday present: a Nikon wide angle, tilt/shift lens. Okay, so my birthday is in four months, whatever. I've been lusting after one of these things forever. I mean, FOREVER. What is so great about them, you ask?
Well, for one, there's the tilt: you can tilt the objective lens relative to the sensor plane. Why is that useful? Well, because as you remember from your college physics course, a lens focuses a focal plane to a focal point, so everything within the focal plane appears to be in focus at that point, and tilting the objective tilts the focal plane at an angle to the sensor. By tilting like that, part of the sensor stays in focus, but the rest goes out of focus, resulting in seriously cool shots like this. Stills are cool... but how about time lapses?
And then there's the shift. Ever taken a picture of a tall building? You point up at it, and the finished product looks like the thing is falling away from you. So you back waaaaaaaaay up in order to not point up but rather keep the lens perpendicular to the sides of the building, and then it looks okay.... but at the expense of half the frame filled with hot dog stands, parking lots, and god knows what else. Sure would be nice to be able to shift the building's image into the full frame at that point, eh? Yep, you got it.
Sure, you can fake the tilt effect (partially) in Photoshop. But you can't do it all without the real lens. The artistic possibilities are endless! I want to do a time lapse of my city with Mats Bergström's "Fratres" as the music, so I'm scoping out locales right now.
Sigh.
Gadgets are pretty cool, but I still have an enormous conversation to have soon.
But tilt/shift! TILT/SHIFT!!
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