90mm tse

[Kaypee]

Has anyone had any experiment with the 90tse? I have been using the 24mmii happily for a number of years but wanted to add something longer for architectural detail shots and sections of rooms.
The dop seems to be incredibly shallow and even when tilting I'm struggling to get any reasonably wide area of focus. I expected it to be shallow with the focal length but at f22 it's still wafer thin.

[Doug Peterson]

Which medium or large format system are you using it with?

[Kaypee]

35mm Doug.

[Drew Harty]

I have a canon 90mm TS lens I have used for years. It's an excellent lens unless you shift or tilt it to the extreme where sharpness will really fall off. I use it mostly for the tilt function and have learn that, though its a nice lens, it is not capable of producing the excellent overall sharpness a good lens on a view camera can.

Drew Hartry

[geesbert]

I keep reading that this lens is excellent, but in my opinion it is just ok, but as it is the only short tele lens for the Canon system that allows tilt and shift with automated f-stop you're out of options if you need that.

Optically there are much better lenses out there, like the super-rotator with zeiss glass or the Rodagons with the divers T/S adapter solutions, but you'll lose auto-f-stop.

The 90 is ok at medium distances, but it wants to be stopped down quite a bit.

its sharpness pretty sucks at close range and when stopped down past f11 and it swallows a lot of light (nearly 1 stop at 60cm compared to the 100mm macro IS)


That said, it is one of the easiest TS-Lenses to handle, just metering when tilted or shifted doesn't work properly, so P-mode is out.


I've heard rumors of it being replaced for nearly a decade now. I think it is the oldest lens in Canon's line-up. It is really about time for a V2, especially whith the high MP camera comming out, but Canon is sound asleep at the wheel.

I always think running a Canon rumors website must be one of the dullest jobs available in the new economy

[gazwas]

The 90tse is an excellent lens but in architecture tilts are not that useful IMO and best to keep to swings (if subject allows) with longer lenses to increase DOF. For interior detail there is too much height to the important areas of the image for the wedge of focus to cover when tilting and while the deprh of focus might be greater usually other areas of the image end up less sharp.

[buckshot]

35mm Doug.

So, given the choice between posting in Cameras, lenses and shooting gear and posting in Medium format, film and digital backs ... you chose the latter.

I know the MF forum on LuLa and the one over at GetDPI are pretty quiet these days, but it hasn't come to this has it?

[Chris_Brown]

Try the Schneider tilt-shift lenses as a comparison. They are optically superior to the canon lenses but use a very different workflow.

http://www.lensrentals.com/rent/canon/lenses/specialty/schneider-50mm-f2.8-super-angulon-for-canon

http://www.lensrentals.com/rent/canon/lenses/specialty/schneider-90mm-f4.5-makro-symmar-for-canon

[eronald]

The 90tse is an excellent lens but in architecture tilts are not that useful IMO and best to keep to swings (if subject allows) with longer lenses to increase DOF. For interior detail there is too much height to the important areas of the image for the wedge of focus to cover when tilting and while the deprh of focus might be greater usually other areas of the image end up less sharp.

Did you intentionally write depth of focus, or did you mean depth of field?

I believe some degree of software-driven tilt will  sooner or later come to the new Sony cameras, by means of their sensor stabiliser, and to all cameras via some sort of racked-focus multiple exposure panorama function. This is probably one of the things which prevents Canon from investing in new tilt and shift lens models. Both Nikon and Canon have lost the old certainty that tomorrow is going to be like today; in fact they know that sales tomorrow will probably be lower than sales today, and that the later arriving product always has new tech, which puts a crimp in new product launches.

TS lenses will probably have a longer life in LF.

Edmund

[Kaypee]

Buckshot- On the grounds that there are a lot of poster who use tilt shifts and view cameras here who would be able to give more more specific knowledge. I did give it some thought though, but as there are a lot of posts regarding 35mm development and i was talking about a lens rather than a system, I decided it's unlikely that anyone would be bothered in the slightest. The learning curve continues….

[Kaypee]

Thanks Gazwas. I have heard a few people say tilts aren't important in architecture. I use it pretty much all the time on the 24mm to extend focus and keep as close to the sweet spot as possible. The 90mm seems to have a wafer thin depth of field whether on a close subject or interiors. I'm getting to really small f-stops before I can get a sharp image which defeats the point of why I bought it.

[gazwas]

I use rise and fall all the time and occasionally swing but I don't think I've ever needed to tilt the lens with the 24tse for any architecture shot I've ever done shooting at f8-f11.

The 90tse behaves pretty much as the Rodenstock 90HR and Schneider 120N I shot with my Phase P65+ in that you had to stop them down massively to get for example, the tall vase with flowers in the forground in focus as well as the far side of the room type of shot. Much easer to move the flowes or crop the table and forget the tilting IMO. Tilts ate much more at home in landscape photography.

[Kaypee]

Thanks. I was wondering if it was just my copy! What f-stop would you take the 90mm to? I can't seem to find much on the sweet spot.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Has anyone had any experiment with the 90tse? I have been using the 24mmii happily for a number of years but wanted to add something longer for architectural detail shots and sections of rooms.
The dop seems to be incredibly shallow and even when tilting I'm struggling to get any reasonably wide area of focus. I expected it to be shallow with the focal length but at f22 it's still wafer thin.

Hi,

Any 90mm will have less DOF than any 24mm, in fact at 3 metres distance only some 6.7% of the DOF of a 24mm at f/5.6. Stopping down to f/22 will  get you lots of diffraction blur and only 3.1% of the DOF (because the DOF of a 24mm grows much faster, and it is already larger to start with).

The TS-E is no different, and the fact that you can use tilt (or swing) only allows to more accurately position the plane of best focus.

So you probably need to rethink what it exactly is that you are trying to achieve. Any longer focal length will reduce overall DOF, so you may need to use another technique, like focus stacking, instead.

This all has nothing to do with the quality of the TS-E 90mm, which is excellent.

Cheers,
Bart

[Kaypee]

Thanks Bart. I wanted a lens longer then the 24mm tse. Even with the 1.4 extender it still not long enough really.
Its closer and more compressed look as in the example i would like but I can't get the depth of field and as Im using a 5d I don't have a lot of pixels to spare.

If the 45tse was better that would be my answer I think.

[Chris_Brown]

I have all four of the TS-E lenses. I use the 90mm about 85% of the time, with a shallow DOP, mostly for products and garden scenes. I've not used it for architecture.

I understand you want some nice visual compression from the 90mm. Depending on where the closest and farthest objects are that need to stay in focus, you may be stopping down to f32. If you're shooting tethered then it's easy to find out where to place the plane of focus and what the minimum f-stop needs to be. However, you'll find diffraction does take a toll on the IQ at small f-stops.

The Canon 45mm TSE is not the sharpest pencil in the box. I've had three copies (first two stolen) and wish I could have that first copy back. It was sharper, with less color fringing than the subsequent lenses. I tried the Schneider 50mm TS lens and it is very sharp, with excellent edge acuity. However, it's completely manual and does not embed the image with any EXIF data (no f-stop info). For the price, this was a deal-breaker for me.

If you don't have a Canon 45 TS-E, I suggest you rent one as a trial.

[gazwas]

Thanks. I was wondering if it was just my copy! What f-stop would you take the 90mm to? I can't seem to find much on the sweet spot.

No, it doesn't have a great DOF when stopped down and I always associated that with thw gaussian optic system (what ever that is) for smooth blur. The 90mm doesn't really have a sweet spot as its very good wide open to about F13. Sometimes I go to F16 but sharpness does suffer and rather that DOF increasing it all just starts to look softer so I stack if I need more and shot at F11 (usually for product images). I tend to go with what it does and if I'm picking out detail some falloff in sharpness works ok for me pulling the eye into the image. The image you posted above is an situation when I would swing rather than tilt.

With regards the 45mm tse, I have all the other tse's apart from that one as I've been hoping Canon updates it as its a focal length I use often but the cost new, having optical issues was too much and currently used copies tend to sell not too far from their new value. Possibly wedding shooters have started to use them for selected focus and bumped the used price up?

[marc aurel]

I have posted this before, but since the question is explicitly about the image quality of the TS-E 90: here are 100% crops from an architectural scene taken with the A7R, shifted up 10mm, different apertures, compared to other shift lenses. The TS-E 90 is a great lens.
Marc

[Kaypee]

Thanks Marc. Thats interesting. How are you compensating for the different focal lengths compared to the building? Are you moving further away for the longer lenses?

[marc aurel]

Thanks Marc. Thats interesting. How are you compensating for the different focal lengths compared to the building? Are you moving further away for the longer lenses?

For the longer focal lengths I stepped away further from the building to get the same framing. Here is the original posting with more details:
http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=93273.0