Shift lens

[gordy59]

Can any one recommend a good quality Shift lens, i hate taking photos of buildings which seem to give me bad Converging verticals, in some cases you just cannot get far enough back to correct it.

[tcom]

I would like to have such a lens, but I never really found one in Pentax mount. Maybe someone here can help...

[gordy59]

In Nowich we have a lovely cathedral, and to get that classic shot of the spire you need to be very close, but then it ends up leaning right over you.

[Encor]

If one doesn't want to spend too much money on such lens, I can reccomend the Arsat 35mm f/2,8. Check out the bottom of the page at http://www.shutterbug.net...ws/lenses/0801sb_thewide/
AFAIK there is a K-mount version of the Arsat. But of course it's an equivalent to M-series Pentax lenses, i.e. no "A" settings.

[tswill2]

How many hundreds of dollars are you ready to spend on a shift lens?  Have you looked into the software applications that automatically do perspective correction?  The examples I have seen online look good....

[manual_focus]

Pentax made a SMC K28mm f3.5 Shift Lens.  Very expensive if I remember correctly.  See this link for details.

http://www.bdimitrov.de/k...-angle/K28f3.5-Shift.html

Here is a review from Amazon.com on the lens

 indispensible tool for architectural photography, June 18, 2001
Reviewer:   "njrktect" (South Jersey) - See all my reviews

We have been using this lens with several pentax-type camera bodies for the past 13 years and have few complaints. With regular maintenance and care, this has become an indispensible tool in our professional practice. We work with historic buildings, and photo-documentation is critical. Short of excessively expensive photogrammetry, a perspective shifting lens solves those parallax skewed images with a reasonable investment. (I am not sure this model is even still in production. In fact, I don't believe there are many similar lenses made; Nikon makes a 35 mm with wonderful optics, but the extra wide angle provided by a 28 mm is fantastic.) We have used standard 24 mm lenses. We've tried those newer wide zoom 18-28 lenses. But for the ability to capture a shot with close to undistorted parallax, nothing beats a shift lens.

A word on its operation. I won't go into the technical details of the optics, but I have had no complaints unless you try to push the correction out to its limits. Say you are standing on a typical street looking at a three story building. It sits up on a natural rise above the street, and you can only move back 60 feet or so across the street. With a 28mm you still have to tilt the lens up to capture all of the building. You snap it and wonder why it looks so distorted when you look at thge results. The sides of the building are splayed at weird angles and the top of the roof is clipped.

Well, with the shift lens you compose the image right in the viewfinder through the lens. As you spin a knurled dial, the body of the lens shifts laterally off axis and compensates for the distorted view. (The barrel spins independently of the mount in 30 degree increments so you can turn the camera to any orientation.) You hold the camera level and shift until the splayed verticals of the building pull back closer to parallel, and suddenly the top of the building comes into the frame! Don't shift too far or it starts to look fudged; the eye likes a bit of parallax spread. The Greeks figured that out long ago. Now your photos look like those you've seen in the glossy magazines. Add the right filtering and suddenly you have publishable images.

I won't fool you: this lens takes some experimentation to get it right. Like any other adjustable parameter of photography, I recommend taking a few extra shots at slightly different settings (so you don't have to go back again). It is a bit on the heavy side, but with practice and a steady hand it works fine. At 1:3.5 it is fast enough for most lighting conditions with average speed film. One last bit of warning: it does not work on automatic cameras--only fully manual metering. But if you are serious about architectural photography, you'll either already have a manual camera or you can pop... for one of Pentax's plain jane workhorse bodies.

Not for everybody, but you definitely get what you pay for in this case."

[KhoKing]

How many hundreds of dollars are you ready to spend on a shift lens?  Have you looked into the software applications that automatically do perspective correction?  The examples I have seen online look good....

Yes, I would thought that software correction is more convenient nowadays, especially with all photos in digital files

[kasey]

check out ebay, i've seen them there.

kasey

[MonkeySpanker]

Fix in photoshop

[LL]

There is so much to be said about large format view cameras. Look at Calumet web site, they have some equipment to do your kind of photography or perhaps to dream
about.

[LL]

http://www.horsemanusa.com/vcc.html
I found a gadget but I did not see Pentax adapter.

[tswill2]

On page 2, see 21877 PENTAX K MOUNT ?  for 35mm but no reason it wouldn't work with DSLR.

[LL]

If it works with film, it will work with digital. However lenses suitable to match half frame format are non existant. ( at least I did not see any yet ) I'm sure that Rodenstock or Schneider will be just too happy to oblige to your wishes.

[tagov]

Hello. I bought on Ebay a shift lens Pentax 28 f3.5 and I have done some tests can be viewed here http://www.mundopentax.co...foro/index.php?topic=5943.
I am very happy with this lens, and encourages amateur photographers of architecture to find this lens to enjoy it.

Greetings.

[calsan]

There's one on ebay today (21 Feb 2009) - I searched worldwide for "K 28 3.5 Shift".
However, make sure to have some of the old folding stuff handy, it's not cheap!

My guess about the reason Pentax don't make these any more is that film's surface is fairly flat, so light rays can hit at any angle.

Digital is actually a lot of little buckets: UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
You might shift the light into the side of the "buckets" and get a poor result?

Of course, you could buy it and experiment, if it doesn't work as hoped on digital, it will still work on film.  Considering the effort taken to get each shot, you may as well use slide film and get the best possible result.  The lens will always be desirable, so it's not like you couldn't sell it later on.