90 — Tilt shift lenses for landscape photography — Interview w/ Darwin Wiggett

November 24, 2010 By 16 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #90 fea­tures an inter­view with Cana­dian land­scape pho­tog­ra­pher Dar­win Wiggett. It was recorded on a photo tour in the Alberta Rock­ies led by Dar­win. In the inter­view Dar­win dis­cusses why he often uses a tilt shift lens in land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy. For those that have never heard of a tilt shift lens, it’s a lens that has the abil­ity to tilt and/or shift while attached to your cam­era. The tilt­ing aspect of the lens allows you to get amaz­ing depth of field (REGARDLESS‚ of aper­ture) because the lens can tilt in the same direc­tion as the plane of focus. The shift aspect of the lens allows you to cor­rect non par­al­lel lines in cam­era when pho­tograph­ing a build­ing for exam­ple. It also allows for easy panora­mas. Dar­win is a fab­u­lous teacher so take a lis­ten and it will all make even more sense. We also talk a bit about test­ing your lenses, res­o­lu­tion, aper­ture, depth of field and image circles.

An exam­ple of a tilt shift lens

Note how the image on the right has SUPERB depth of field because the tilt shift lens was TILTED into the plane of focus. Image at left uses a regular wide angle lens.

Note how the image on the right has SUPERB depth of field because the tilt shift lens was TILTED into the plane of focus. Image at left uses a reg­u­lar wide angle lens. ‚©D. Wiggett

Note how the lighthouse is straight in the shot at right due to the shift correction on a tilt shift lens

Note how the light­house is straight in the shot at right due to the SHIFT cor­rec­tion on a tilt shift lens. Image at left uses a reg­u­lar wide angle lens. ‚© D. Wiggett

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Work­shops and photo tours with Dar­win Wiggett
Jay Maisel Doc­u­men­tary for inspi­ra­tion
Show us where you live is the reg­u­lar assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Time (No clocks) is the level 2 assign­ment this month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum
Nikon’s 24mm tilt shift lens at B&H
Canon’s 24mm tilt shift lens at B&H

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Thanks to Ice­Cream­Man and Benny who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast. Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board. Most of the links to actual the prod­ucts are affil­i­ate links that help sup­port this site. Thanks in advance if you pur­chase through those links.

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Comments

  1. Jack says:
    April 17, 2011 at 7:28 am

    Ian Moran is one of my Faforite Land­scape Pho­tog­ra­pher .. just for share ‚take a look here
    http://photograpyreview.blogspot.com/2011/01/amazing-landscape-photography-from-ian.html

    Reply
  2. Evan Spellman says:
    March 27, 2011 at 3:56 pm

    Fol­lowed the link from Darwin’s web­site.
    I think that tilt shift is THE Way to go for a land­scape pho­tog­ra­pher !
    its like using the old large for­mat camera’s on a mod­ern cam­era.
    thanks for this super pod­cast !
    cheers,
    Evan

    Reply
  3. admin says:
    December 30, 2010 at 11:09 am

    Thanks again for this extra awe­some piece of infor­ma­tion Evan!

    Reply
  4. Evan Bedford says:
    December 29, 2010 at 9:07 pm

    Hmm. The mirex link got gar­bled, but here’s the non-translated version:

    http://www.mirex-adapter.de/tilt_shift_adapter.htm

    Haul it into Google trans­la­tor if needed. The folks at Mirex don’t have a per­fect com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage, but it’s miles ahead of my Ger­man. If you have any ques­tions, just zip them an e-mail. And they now accept Pay-pal, which is a lot eas­ier than their pre­vi­ous arrange­ment via the banks.

    Reply
  5. Evan Bedford says:
    December 29, 2010 at 9:02 pm

    No prob­lem. Here they are.

    For the Mirex:

    http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&langpair=de|en&u=http://www.mirex-adapter.de/tilt_shift_adapter.htm

    For the Zork:

    http://www.zoerk.com/pages/p_psa.htm

    I should also men­tion that the Zork has an ungainly screw mech­a­nism that makes the unit and cam­era dif­fi­cult to pack in a lim­ited space.

    Reply
  6. admin says:
    December 29, 2010 at 1:33 pm

    That’s great info Evan — Thanks so much for shar­ing it. Just curi­ous might you also have exact links for the Zork and Mirex adapters?

    Thx again!

    Reply
  7. Evan Bedford says:
    December 28, 2010 at 4:26 pm

    I received a Mirex tilt-shift adapter from Ger­many a cou­ple of weeks ago (to use my old Mamiya man­ual focus lenses with a Canon 5D). I was very impressed with the build qual­ity (much bet­ter than the Zork shift adapter which I also ordered), price (about $500) and func­tion­al­ity. The tilt has gra­da­tions marked on it and a screw for adjust­ing the fric­tion on the mech­a­nism. The shift has click stops at the mil­lime­tre marks. http://evanbedford.com/gx680.htm I’ve included some shots I did with the tilt at the link above. I even used a Mamiya shift lens on the shift adapter, which really boosts the shift to lev­els more typ­i­cal with view cameras.

    Reply
  8. Michael Van der Tol says:
    December 9, 2010 at 11:03 pm

    Superb pod­cast Marko. I’ve been dream­ing about that Nikon 24mm Tilt-shift lens so it was great to hear Dar­win and you dis­cuss the in & outs of using a TS.

    Thanks

    Regards,

    MikeV

    Reply
  9. charles binns landscape photography says:
    December 2, 2010 at 11:54 am

    Fan­tas­tic pod­cast. Dar­win is an amaz­ing teacher. I had never thought of get­ting a tilt shift lens but now I might just do so.

    Reply
  10. Las Vegas Weddings says:
    November 27, 2010 at 4:05 am

    im not really famil­iar with the tilt-shift. but thanks. you just gave me an idea on how that actu­ally works. the out­come of the photo is bet­ter than using the reg­u­lar angle lens. thanks for shar­ing your ideas.

    Reply
  11. admin says:
    November 27, 2010 at 2:50 am

    Thanks for the com­ments Guys — and Yup, Dar­win Rocks!

    Reply
  12. Lee Sacrey says:
    November 26, 2010 at 9:54 pm

    Great Pod­cast. I too have been on work­shop and at sem­i­nars with Dar­win. He is one of if not the best land­scape pho­tog­ra­pher around. This is another exam­ple of him shar­ing his knowl­edge and tal­ent with the rest of us. Again great pod­cast, keep them coming.

    Reply
  13. rabs says:
    November 26, 2010 at 10:08 am

    Hi, yet another great pod­cast Marko! I have never been very famil­iar with tilt-shift lenses, the only thing i knew about them was the miniature-model effect. I have always thought post-processing in pho­to­shop could cre­ate the same effect. But after see­ing the sam­ple pho­tos for this pod­cast and lis­ten­ing to Dar­win Wiggett i realise that there is much more to these lenses. Too bad they are so expen­sive! Would have been fun to play around with one once in a while.

    –rabs

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Some Tidbits on Tilt Shifts | How to Photograph the Canadian Rockies says:
    March 15, 2011 at 4:31 am

    […] the image below). If you want to learn more about why I use tilt shift lenses and how they work go lis­ten to  this pod­cast with yours truly over at Photography.ca. I highly rec­om­mend the pod­casts at Photography.ca (not […]

    Reply
  2. Some Tidbits on Tilt Shifts « Darwin Wiggett says:
    December 1, 2010 at 1:20 pm

    […] If you want to learn more about why I use tilt shift lenses and how they work go lis­ten to‚ this pod­cast with yours truly over at Photography.ca. I highly rec­om­mend the pod­casts at Photography.ca (not […]

    Reply

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