On 12 Jan 2002 at 12:28, herb greenslade wrote: > A little background for Rob
> With small town and country homes, one crosses the road, stands back some and > usually with a 70-210 zoom, there is little distortion, and what little there is > can be corrected in Photoshop. The problem starts becoming serious when one has > to use a 35mm or wider to capture a large building or a store front on a narrow > street. There are limitations using Photoshop, as a major correction compresses > buildings and/or distorts other parts of the image. Hi Herb, This post sheds a little more light on the subject :-) I understand every thing that you have indicated thus far except the bit about the compression distortion, but I'll address that later. > My understanding is that the shift lens is really a compromise, as to do real > corrections, the film plane also must be adjusted. Not really, the film plane only need be adjusted (to cease to be parallel with the focal plane) when you require a plane of focus that isn't parallel with the focal plane. In the case of photographing buildings this is rarely the case, generally buildings are built leaning :-) If you were to employ a large format camera with shift, swing and tilt capabilities you would generally only employ shift (and I guess combined with swing on rare occasions). > What I'd like to know, > Do you feel that you got full value from the lens, as the lens is very > expensive. Are you satisfied with the results. I purchased my lens at "the right price" so I didn't have to delve that deep into my pocket therefore its "value" has never been a problem for me, however I must admit that I don't use it that often. Whilst many photographers may argue that 35mm shift lenses are grossly expensive compared to the cost of a reasonable LF kit that may do just as much and more (better quality, more flexible) there are times when lugging any extra kit is not justifiable (or is plainly impossible) and secondly where LF is cumbersome or inappropriate. As an example of cumbersome consider using an LF camera over a 35mm camera with shift lens for shooting multi-image panoramas (for digital seamless stitching) where the horizon needs to be offset. I wouldn't like to have to use LF in this situation from both the cost and convenience perspectives. There are of course many other non-architectural uses for a shift lens too, it can help to get the camera out of the shot when shooing towards mirrors etc. The lens as a 28mm wide angle is pretty good, of course the performance in the corners at full shift isn't as good as the centre but it's still very good. > Do you find the lens awkward to > use (I understand that it uses a double aperture system) Yes it's a bit of a pain but of course it's generally not used where you would need to quickly chase light changes either, it's not as painful as using a screw mount lens on a K mount body IMHO and plenty of people do that regularly without complaint. > If for the same amount > of money, you had a chance to buy a 400-500 mm lens and your interest is also > nature, which lens would you choose. Bad question, I'm a sucker I'd probably buy both :-) This one is up to you to decide and obviously could be well influenced by the value of the deal that you are being presented with. WRT the compression distortion introduced by perspective correction in Photoshop check my page following, if it is done correctly there should be no such artifacts in the corrected image. http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/perspective.html PS When you actually do get into producing your models you'll have to agonize over the value of the 15f3.5 :-) Cheers, Rob Studdert HURSTVILLE AUSTRALIA Tel +61-2-9554-4110 UTC(GMT) +10 Hours [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://members.ozemail.com.au/~distudio/publications.html - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
