3 Epic Ways to Use a Tilt Shift Lens

Tilt Shift Lenses are used to correct converging lines occurring when you tilt a lens up at a subject. This is most prevalent when shooting architecture photography with wide angle lenses but can happen with any lens. Converging lines may be OK in certain types of photography but they won't fly in architectural photography. Lightroom and Photoshop have tools that fix perspective so why are these lenses still so heavily used today?

The easy answer is control. Editing software will crop or cut certain portions of the image out in an attempt to straighten the converging lines and you end up with what the software dictates, not what vision you have for the image. Plus, using the guides to stretch and straighten the image always causes a loss of sharpness. A Tilt Shift lens allows you to adjust the lens and get the exact composition in camera.

So what is Tilt and Shift? In general terms, shift is used to raise the lens up or down keeping the focal plane flat to the sensor so you don't have to tilt the camera up toward the subject. Tilt is generally used to alter the focal plane of the lens to align closer to what is being photographed. This can bring much more depth of field into focus at wide open apertures such as F4 rather than F16.

I use the Nikon 19mm PC F4 lens which has the capability to shift or tilt up/down, left/right or diagonally. I can even tilt or shift diagonally and use both shift and tilt at the same. The shift and tilt functions operate independently and each function can rotate 360 degrees providing endless opportunities.

Here are 3 ways I use myTilt Shift Lens:

1) Panoramas: I adjust the shift function to move left to right. I leave the camera in the same position shooting 3 images: left, center and right. I then stitch the images together in photoshop. There is no curvature to the image as there would be when you move the camera position left to right. It's easier to compose the image and the image turns out exactly as planned

2) Landscape: Foreground interest is usually hard to get in focus without focus stacking. Most of the time you are adjusting the aperture or film speed to keep the motion blur out of the flowers in the foreground. The Tilt Shift lens offers a unique solution. Using the tilt function, you can focus on the background and then tilt the camera lens down a degree or so and check the focus on the foreground. It may take some time but you can rock this back and forth until you get it perfect. This will allow you to shoot the entire scene at F4 with complete focus from front to back giving you higher shutter speeds and without noise being added from faster film speeds.

3). Architectural: Whether you are shooting buildings or hotel rooms, the lines need to be straight and this lens is paramount in making this happen without the unwanted side effects of cropping or stretching the image. 

If you are in the market for a Tilt Shift lens, purchase one allowing you to shift and tilt simultaneously and independently. 

The image above: Notice the tree trunks, lamp posts and building lines are all straight. The image below shows the tilt and shift functions on the lens.

Good luck and good light to you.

About David Williams: I specialize in African Wildlife and Indigenous People Cultural Photography. See my work at https://www.davidwilliamsphotography.com https://davidwilliams.photoshelter.com/index or Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/david_williams_photography