Can a Lensbaby be used as a tilt lens?

[Fine_Art]

Ive never used a Lensbaby. Can they be used for tilt in the place of a more expensive tilt/Shift lens? Do they have a good plane of focus or are they more of a point focus with everything around that point going blurry?

[01af]

Basically yes, the Lensbabies are 50 mm tilt lenses. However the image quality won't be quite up to the standard of a real shift-and-tilt lens; there will be some serious fall-off of sharpness towards the frame's edges. Still, sharpness may be good enough for many applications when using a medium or small aperture. If you really want to try it, get the latest Lensbaby version which is called "3G"---it has the highest image quality of all Lensbabies (versions 2.0 and 3G are double-element lenses, original version is a single-element lens), and it can be fixed in tilted state which is useful, if not required, when shooting off a tripod. The other Lensbabies are meant for hand-held shooting only.

However the Lensbabies are not meant in any way as a replacement for serious shift-and-tilt lenses in technical applications like architecture, documentation, advertising, or product photography. Instead, their main purpose is catching dreamy and impressionistic images ... which they do fairly well.

-- Olaf

[duraace]

The lensbaby IMO does not replace T/S effects.  For T/S I've resorted to implementing the effect in Photoshop.  Here's a couple of example.  The first is a fake T/S done in PS, and the second was taken with a Lensbaby 2.0.

http://members.shaw.ca/claude.biron/TS_Lensbaby/

Can anyone tell me how the first photo could have been improved with a real T/S lens, and what lens could have been used for Nikon?

[picnic]

The lensbaby IMO does not replace T/S effects.  For T/S I've resorted to implementing the effect in Photoshop.  Here's a couple of example.  The first is a fake T/S done in PS, and the second was taken with a Lensbaby 2.0.

http://members.shaw.ca/claude.biron/TS_Lensbaby/

Can anyone tell me how the first photo could have been improved with a real T/S lens, and what lens could have been used for Nikon?
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

If you are only interested in using a T/S lens for selective focus, then I don't think the cost is worth it.  However, if you plan to use the T/S for the variety of creative uses it offers, then its worth it--at least for me.  I use it for architectural shooting (primarily shift, but also tilt for the effect of greater DOF), tilt for the effect of greater DOF for landscape and smaller subjects, 3 flat shot panos, selective focus and as a very good manual focus prime (I have a Canon 45 f/2.8 TS and have rented the Canon 24 TS).    I also have a Lensbaby 2.0 which I bought originally knowing I would use it for selective focus but knew that it couldn't suffice for the other uses.

Here's a gallery with a number of my TS shots from last year---using all these methods.  
[a href=\"http://www.pbase.com/picnic/tiltshift]http://www.pbase.com/picnic/tiltshift[/url]
and here are a couple early shots using the LB 2.0

and


and this is a 'fake' selective focus done in PS


Diane

[duraace]

Nice photos.  How does one use a T/S lens on a wide angle shot to achieve very shallow DOF? Are you saying PS does as good a job in post processing?

[picnic]

Nice photos.  How does one use a T/S lens on a wide angle shot to achieve very shallow DOF? Are you saying PS does as good a job in post processing?
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I'm assuming you are meaning selective focus.  That's done by doing basically the opposite of what you would do to achieve the appearance of greater DOF.  You may tilt up or swing the opposite direction, etc.   The area of focus is determined by that which creates a 'cone' of focus and your choice of aperture--and where/how you focus manually.

A wonderful gallery for seeing creative effects is Mark Tucker's--his Ecuadorian one is particularly good for seeing how he uses a TS for creative purposes but check out his other galleries too--he uses interesting lens effects in much of his work (plus he is an excellent post processor).
[a href=\"http://www.marktucker.com/07ecuador/index.html]http://www.marktucker.com/07ecuador/index.html[/url]

No, I don't think that PS is as good for this--but if its not a lot of your shooting, a whole lot less expensive.

Diane

[Fine_Art]

Thanks all for the replies.

I am looking for a quality plane of focus so I see the LB wont work. Too bad. The only tilt shift I know of for the Alpha mount is the Arax. I dont know how good or bad it is.

I want this for landscapes and architecture.

[Thomas Krüger]

You may have a look at the Zörk Pro Shift adapter from Mr. Zörkendörfer at Munich.
http://www.zoerk.com/pages/p_pshift.htm